Isenberg Students Excel at Commonwealth College - The Virtual ...

The 

CommonWealth 

Vol. 23, No. 1 Winter 2009 www.isenberg.umass.edu 

Isenberg Students 

Excel at 

Commonwealth 

College 

21st Century Leaders Brooke Naylor ’08 

and Ryan Durkin ’08 (front) 

and Jack Welch Scholar Adam Ferrarini ’08 

A UMASS amherst alumni/business affairs publication of the Isenberg school of management

IN THIS ISSUE 

UP FRONT 

2 Isenberg School Students Excel at 

Commonwealth College 

6 The Isenberg School’s 

Part-Time Online Program: 

Rx for Medical Professionals 

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT 

10 Bob Munroe ’82 

Athletes’ Skin Care is His Mission 

12 Kristen Kuliga ’91 

On the Art of Negotiation and 

Adding Business Value 

14 Andy Oleksak ’79 MBA 

Isenberg School Alumnus Leads 

Expanding Lumber Products Business 

16 Isenberg School Class Notes 

Their hard work and your gift 

will help them realize their dream. 

Give back and support the hopes of the young 

women and men who follow you at 

the Isenberg School of Management. 

To make a gift 

on-line visit: 

www.umass.edu/development/give 

Call 

413.545.5604 

or mail 

Isenberg School of Management, Development Office 

121 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA 01003-9310. 

SUPPORT THE ISENBERG ADVANTAGE 

IT’S A SHARED EXPERIENCE 

Thank you for your generosity! 

AROUND THE SCHOOL 

18 Jack ’57 and Suzy Welch 

Visit the Isenberg School 

19 Jack Smith ’60 on Cars, Planes 

and Finance 

20 Virtual Center for Supernetworks 

Targets the Big Issues 

21 Isenberg School Professor Catalyzes 

Scientific Research in South Africa 

22 A Scholarship Can Make a 

World of Difference 

23 New Book Demonstrates How Nice 

Guys Can Finish First 

ISENBERG SCHOOL NEWS 

24 Isenberg MBA Program #1 in the 

Nation for Greatest Opportunity for 

Women 

24 Sheila Bair Tops Wall Street Journal’s 

List of The 50 Women to Watch 

24 Professor Bisgaard Honored 

25 Isenberg School’s Career Center 

Holds Largest Career Fair in 

School’s History 

25 Advice to Isenberg School Students 

from the Heart of Wall Street 

26 Students Learn Investment 

Management Skills in New Student 

Managed Fund 

27 Restaurant Owner and Alumnus 

Examines Entrepreneurship and 

Social Responsibility 

27 New Head Appointed for Hospitality 

and Tourism Management Program 

27 Sport Management Students 

Leverage Social Networking 

Techniques in Course Practicum 

28 Influential Authors Visit the 

Isenberg School 

28 Professor Wong Advises Knight 

Comission on Intercollegiate 

Athletics 

29 Stephen Jefferson Named to Rider 

University’s Athletic Hall of Fame 

29 CISDM Returns to Korea 

Comments? Questions? Email the editor at 

ariel@som.umass.edu

Dear Alumni and Friends, 

Progress on many fronts at the Isenberg School offers evidence 

of good news during challenging economic times. First and 

foremost, we expect to have a permanent dean in place by July 1. 

A national search is underway, with active participation from our 

new chancellor, Robert Holub. The search includes a 14-person 

search committee with alumni representation and the services 

of the nationally accomplished Boston-based search consultant, 

Isaacson, Miller. 

Dean candidates will find the strong leadership qualities of our new 

chancellor extremely attractive. A former provost and vice chancellor 

for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a 

former dean at the University of California at Berkeley, Chancellor 

Holub has devised a strategy to move UMass Amherst into the top 

national ranks of public universities. The campus, he insists, must make 

progress in eight key areas: research, fundraising, communications, 

administration, graduate education, undergraduate studies and general 

education, facilities, and strategic hiring of faculty. 

As this issue of The CommonWealth makes clear, Isenberg School 

students are getting better and better. Our cover story on the almost 700 

Isenberg School students who are also students of the campus’s honors 

college, Commonwealth College, illustrates the growing overlap in the 

outstanding profiles of both sets of students. One significant milestone has 

been in SAT scores: this year’s Isenberg School freshmen as a group had 

SAT scores that exceeded 1200. 

Our full-time MBA students have also excelled, with incoming GMAT 

averages of 660. That program, moreover, has just received national 

recognition from Princeton Review for offering the Greatest Opportunity 

for Women among the nation’s MBA programs. 

At the same time, our Part-Time MBA program’s online variant continues 

to attract hundreds of upwardly mobile professionals. In the current 

magazine, you can read about the online MBA experiences of one of 

those professional groups—physicians. 

Drastically reduced state budget appropriations for the current fiscal year 

and especially the year to follow are presenting formidable challenges for 

the UMass Amherst campus and the Isenberg School. In this climate, the 

Isenberg School is scrutinizing every expense and revenue stream to live 

within its means. With that said, it is impossible to overemphasize the 

importance of alumni support, both for our students and the programs that 

bring them what we proudly call The Isenberg Advantage. Your generosity 

brings them state-of-the-art learning technologies, scholarship assistance, 

and experiential learning opportunities, including study and internships 

overseas. By supporting our Chase Career Center, you help our students to 

secure valuable internships and launch rewarding careers. 

Our students have never needed your support more than today. They 

are remarkably self-reliant; at the same time, they are first to admit the 

difference that your generosity can make. Please support the Isenberg 

School! Keep The Isenberg Advantage strong! 

D. Anthony Butterfield 

Dean 

Isenberg School of Management 

The 

CommonWealth 

EDITOR 

Lou Wigdor 

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD 

D. Anthony Butterfield 

Dean 

Jay Gladden 

Associate Dean 

Carol Barr 

Undergraduate Associate Dean 

Eric Berkowitz 

Associate Dean for Professional 

Programs 

Easwar Iyer 

Head, Department of Marketing 

Ben Branch 

Director, Ph.D. Program 

Iqbal Agha 

Chair, Department of Finance and 

Operations Management 

Georgianna Parkin 

Director, Massachusetts Small Business 

Development Center Network 

Lawrence Zacharias 

Chair, Department of Management 

Ronald Mannino 

Chair, Department of Accounting and 

Information Systems 

Rodney Warnick 

Head, Department of 

Hospitality and Tourism Management 

Lisa Pike Masteralexis 

Head, Department of 

Sport Management 

isenberg school 

development office 

Edward Brozman 

Director of Development 

Bonnie Zima Dowd 

Senior Associate Director of 

Development 

Alexander Niefer 

Associate Director of 

Development 

ART DIRECTION 

Brian Jenkins 

cover photo: Dennis Vandal 

The views expressed by contributing authors are 

not necessarily those of The CommonWealth, the 

Isenberg School of Management, or the University 

of Massachusetts Amherst. The editor welcomes 

comments about this issue and suggestions for 

future issues. (ariel@som.umass.edu) 

© Copyright 2009 by the Isenberg School of 

Management, University of Massachusetts at 

Amherst. Reproduction of any part of this publication 

requires permission from the School of 

Management. 

The CommonWealth is distributed twice each 

year to friends and alumni of the Isenberg School 

of Management. For a free subscription, write to 

The CommonWealth, Isenberg School of 

Management, University of Massachusetts, 

Amherst, MA 01003. www.som.umass.edu

Outstanding Students, 

Exceptional Programs: 

Isenberg School 

Students Excel at 

Commonwealth College 

Class of 2008 standouts Ferrarini, Naylor, and Durkin 

Last May, at UMass Amherst’s 138 th Undergraduate 

Commencement ceremony, 11 seniors—three of them from 

the Isenberg School—were singled out among their 4,000 

classmates for special campus-wide recognition. Brooke 

Naylor ’08 and Ryan Durkin ’08 were among nine students 

honored as 21st Century Leaders. The award recognizes 

graduating seniors with exceptional records of achievement, 

initiative, and social awareness. Adam Ferrarini ’08 was one of 

two seniors to receive the Jack Welch Scholarship, an intensely 

competitive full-support award from the GE Fund. 

Naylor, an Operations Management major and Aerospace 

Studies minor from Wakefield, excelled as an Air Force ROTC 

cadet, graduating among the top 10 percent of AFROTC 

cadets in the nation. Durkin, an honor student in Finance 

and Management from Andover, was founder of the Isenberg 

School’s real estate club and captain of the varsity crosscountry 

and track and field teams. Ferrarini, an honor student 

from Wilbraham who majored in finance and English and 

minored in economics, spent a semester at Yale as a visiting 

scholar and achieved his department’s highest grade point 

average. 

The Isenberg School-Commonwealth College Connection. 

Last year, Durkin and Ferrarini were among the hundreds 

of Isenberg School students enrolled in UMass Amherst’s 

Commonwealth College, the Amherst campus’ innovative 

honors college. This year, 682 Isenberg School students 

(21.6% of the School’s undergraduates) are enrolled in the 

college. That’s about 17% of Commonwealth College’s 4,000 

students. Through its innovative curriculum, the College 

challenges its students to explore connections between 

academic disciplines and between theory and practice, 

while interacting among an eclectic community of learners. 

It also encourages students to pursue experiential learning 

opportunities, including community service. 

Admission to the College is typically by invitation. Automatic 

letters of invitation go to entering freshmen who arrive on 

2 UMASS Isenberg school of management

campus with high school grade point averages of 3.5 and SAT 

scores of 1,300. They also must graduate in the top 10% of 

their high school class. “That speaks to the profile of our own 

students, who keep getting better and better,” emphasizes 

Isenberg School undergraduate dean Carol Barr. This year’s 

freshman class, notes Barr, joined the Isenberg School with 

grade point averages of 3.7 and SAT scores exceeding 1,200. 

“Many business students focus on business only. That, I 

believe, is a mistake, both personally and professionally,” 

observes Isenberg 

School and 

Commonwealth 

College senior 

Michael King ’09, 

who majors in 

accounting and 

history. “As an 

honors student, 

the burden is 

on you to grow 

intellectually by 

getting out of your 

comfort zone,” he 

Michael King ’09 

emphasizes. “I do expect to find a job in public accounting 

after graduation, but I’ve developed critical thinking skills 

in my history and other liberal arts courses that will have 

lasting value.” 

King finds value in diverse experiences—both inside 

and outside the classroom. He commends a course that 

examined international accounting regulations and another 

that drew parallels between America’s Reconstruction Era 

and pre-Apartheid South Africa. And he is grateful for his 

recent summer internship with PricewaterhouseCoopers in 

Boston and his ongoing challenges as editor-in-chief of The 

Daily Collegian, where he coordinates the paper’s news, 

advertising, and production departments. 

A challenging curriculum. Students begin the Commonwealth 

College curriculum by completing four general education 

honors courses. “All Isenberg and UMass Amherst students 

take required general education courses, but honors gened 

classes are usually much smaller,” notes King. “By and 

large, you avoid crowded impersonal lectures and get greater 

attention from your professors. Student discussions are usually 

higher quality, and the courses themselves cover the material 

in greater depth. Honors courses are more demanding, but 

their size and organization often make them seem easier.” 

Isenberg School-Commonwealth College students also take 

honors versions of more specialized survey courses. King 

bypassed the Isenberg School’s large introductory accounting 

lecture by opting for a more rigorous alternative with 25 

students. After completing their gen-ed requirements, 

Isenberg School-Commonwealth College students choose one 

of three options as members of the College: they can focus 

within their business major; pursue studies outside their major; 

or negotiate an interdisciplinary honors contract. Whatever 

option they choose, they must take an interdisciplinary 

course offered within the College and a multi-phase course 

where they sharpen research skills and dissect books in 

the company of peers from diverse disciplines. Finally, all 

Commonwealth College students complete a Capstone 

Experience—either independently or with classmates—that 

integrates previous learning and requires original research. 

Isenberg School students who enroll in Commonwealth 

College can count on a challenging curriculum that will 

offer greater depth in individual subjects and broader 

interdisciplinary scope, observes the college’s dean, Priscilla 

Clarkson. “At the same time, we encourage our students to 

look beyond the university—frequently through experiential 

learning and community-based projects—to embrace 

challenges in the “real world.” The College, notes Clarkson, 

aims to offer the structure, freedom, and opportunities that 

will encourage students to take personal initiative and 

become leaders. Opportunities for student leadership, she 

adds, extend to the workings of the College itself through 

peer advising and participation on the College’s student 

advisory board, which give students a voice in college 

programs and policies. Mike King and a second Isenberg 

School student, Lauren Hambidge (Sport Management), 

excel as Commonwealth College peer advisors. And 

last year, accounting major and Jack Welch Scholar 

Tim Alden demonstrated strong leadership on 

Commonwealth College’s Student Advisory Board, 

recalls Dean Clarkson. 

The Capstone Experience: Creating and Integrating 

Knowledge. “Creating knowledge is one of the university’s 

priorities, “ emphasizes Clarkson. And creating knowledge 

and integrating academic work are motives behind 

Commonwealth College’s mandatory capstone experience. 

Students, observes Clarkson, can pursue the Capstone 

Experience individually by completing an independent thesis 

or project. They can alternatively take a “course capstone” 

in which they complete a group project that they dissect in a 

written report. 

Last spring, Isenberg School 

Operations Management 

major Leah Gettens ’08 

chose the individual thesis 

route. During the summer 

of 2007, after spending 

her spring semester at the 

University of Brighton in 

Great Britain, Gettens 

was an au pair in northern 

Spain’s Cantabria province. 

During her stay she met 

many unemployed and 

underemployed Spaniards 

in their twenties. “Many 

were well educated and out 

Leah Gettens ’08 

The CommonWealth 3

of work; some got by teaching surfing part time,” she recalls. 

“How could they subsist that way, I wondered? And why did 

many of them seem unconcerned about their employment 

prospects?” 

To answer those questions, Gettens, who also majored in 

English, explored the subject in her senior honors thesis. 

Focusing on Spaniards between the ages of 20 and 29, she 

examined more than two decades of economic analysis and 

Spanish government policies. Spain, she learned, has a twotier 

labor force: a mainstream group of protected workers 

and a second group of disproportionately young temporary 

contract workers. Among the first group, government policies, 

including high severance pay, contribute to job security. Spain 

has avoided societal and severance costs among the first group 

(especially during economic downturns) by shifting more 

flexible hiring and firing practices to its temporary contract 

workers. “When you combine younger workers’ dissatisfaction 

over insecure contract employment with a culture of family 

support and generous state welfare, it’s understandable, that 

many of them are less than enthusiastic about the job market 

and their career prospects,” concluded Gettens. 

The 22 students in Isenberg School strategy professor 

Anurag Sharma’s spring semester honors capstone course 

had a very different learning experience. During the course, 

teams of four and five students participated in two group 

projects: a four-week business simulation competition 

against a computer, and strategic group analysis of different 

companies (one per team) in the apparel industry. For both 

projects, each student wrote an extended paper analyzing 

his or her work and its integration with the group’s overall 

strategic synthesis. 

Each group comprised students from different business 

subdisciplines. “The simulation gave the students an 

opportunity to see how their different disciplines and skills 

fit together strategically and operationally,” recalls Sharma. 

Each team made decisions about its investments in R&D and 

product development, the firm’s capital structure, and its 

weekly operation. They learned to appreciate the connection 

between operations and financials, including the importance 

of cash flow. They also gained insights into the social 

dynamics of interacting in a group. 

Later in the semester each student group analyzed and made 

strategic recommendations for a different company in the 

apparel industry (companies like Guess and Ralph Lauren). 

For that project, each group dissected its company’s business 

model, financials, and competitive environment. From 

those findings each group made strategic and operational 

recommendations for its adopted firm. 

“A fundamental premise of my course is that a great deal of 

learning is social,” emphasizes Professor Sharma. To that 

end, Sharma’s students participated in a ROPES course in the 

Berkshires and chose half a dozen books to read and critique 

as a class. They also benefited from several presentations in 

the classroom by business practitioners. 

“The course’s small group experiences were the richest of my 

college career,” observed marketing major Angela Holloway ’08. 

Holloway’s team comprised a second marketing major, 

two accounting majors, and a finance major. “During the 

simulation, we often lost track of time making decisions about 

our company, an online manufacturer of sensors,” recalled 

accounting major Eric Benson ’08. The group’s decisions, 

he noted, were wide ranging—determining the company’s 

product mix, on strategies to control costs, even on spinning 

off a part of the company. Group dynamics were also a 

factor. “For the most part, the marketing students in the 

group were more optimistic than the others,” he continued. 

“I wanted the group to view all decisions as calculated risks. 

Nate [Bousquet ’08], a finance major, was in the middle.” 

Brian Morton, an accounting major with business experience 

and 20 years older than the other students, took a different 

tack: “I tried to play as a peer, listening carefully and asking 

occasional questions, but I’d become a devil’s advocate if 

things seemed to be going too smoothly. You have to be on 

guard against groupthink. In group dynamics, you have to get 

your process down.” 

Eric Benson ’08, Brian Morton ’09, Angela Holloway ’08 

An experiential learning capstone. Morton would draw 

no disagreement from Sport Management-Commonwealth 

College students Tania Eicoff ’08, Connor Mckeon ’08, Dan 

Fava ’08, and Stephanie Bodjiak ’09. The students and 

their 20 classmates in Professor Mark McDonald’s Sport 

Event Management class managed and marketed Clif Bar 


SoccerFest 2008, a weekend community soccer competition 

that attracted 136 competing teams (of all ages), 4,000 

spectators, and 180 volunteers. Besides the tournament, 

the event included live musical entertainment and a faninteractive 

zone with numerous activities that gave visibility 

to the event’s many corporate sponsors. A fantasy replica 

of Fenway Park dominated the “zone.” Proceeds from 

SoccerFest supported the Kjeldsen Scholarship Fund, which 

benefits two Sport Management undergraduates each year. 

Bodjiak focused on event registration and styles of leadership. 

Fava specialized in event operations, and Eicoff and 

Mckeon surveyed and interviewed customers and sponsors 

to determine the return on investment by the event’s 30 

corporate sponsors, who had kicked in $15,000 in cash and 

$28,000 in trade equivalents. After the event, the students 

wrote extended papers that evaluated their event 

specialty area 

alongside, in 

Eicoff’s words, 

“how everything 

in SoccerFest fit 

together.” Like 

Professor Sharma, 

Professor McDonald 

was more of a 

coach than a 

lecturer. “He 

made us feel that 

it was our event, 

Connor McKeon ’08, Dan Fava ’08, Tania 

Eicoff ’08, Stephanie Bodjiak ’09 

not his,” recalls Mckeon. “The experience drew on what 

we had learned during four years as Sport Management- 

Commonwealth College majors. But at the same time it 

helped point us forward in the direction of our careers.” n 

Stellar Student Satisfaction Levels 

Isenberg School undergraduates have uncommonly high 

satisfaction levels on the UMass Amherst campus! In a justreleased 

official campus-wide survey of graduating seniors from 

50 departments, five of the seven departments whose graduating 

seniors registered the highest satisfaction with their education 

were from the Isenberg School. How does Isenberg School 

undergraduate dean Carol Barr account for the School’s stellar 

performance? “It’s our faculty, our learning resources, and our 

commitment to experiential learning and a school-wide culture. 

It’s The Isenberg Advantage!” 

Experiential learning through SoccerFest 


The Isenberg School’s Part-Time Online MBA Program: 

Rx for Medical Professionals 

In recent years, the online component of the 

Isenberg School’s Part-Time MBA program has 

attracted a growing professional demographic— 

physicians. Many of them connect to the program 

through its partnership with the American College 

of Physician Executives (ACPE). The ACPE offers 

a certificate program in medical management, 

available online or in-person and taught by 

its own faculty. After completing the ACPE 

certificate, physicians can leverage it online by 

taking the Isenberg School’s core Part-Time MBA 

curriculum. When they complete their Isenberg 

School courses, participants earn an MBA degree 

with a focus in Medical Management. 

The Isenberg program is gaining increasing 

national attention in the medical professions. In a 

recent survey conducted by Modern Healthcare 

magazine that focused on business graduate 

school programs for physician-executives, the 

program ranked twelfth in the nation. In the same 

survey, the program ranked first in the nation for 

the fewest number of required days that students 

must spend on campus and fifth in the nation for 

the lowest total tuition cost. 

“As a group, the doctors really stand out,” 

observes Isenberg School professor Robert 

Nakosteen, who teaches many of them statistics. 

“They are self-selected leaders and tenacious 

workers with a low tolerance for failure. When 

they don’t understand a concept, they never 

blame me; they just work harder.” Most of them, 

he continues, lack deep training in statistics, but 

all are motivated to master and apply it. A good 

part of that motivation, he emphasizes, comes 

from their day-to-day interaction with clinical 

studies. 

“They expect and get quick answers and apply 

what they’ve learned almost immediately,” notes 

Nakosteen. “And they share their real-life clinical 

experiences with other students on-line. It’s a 

win-win outcome for everybody.” 


“Children are our most precious asset,” exclaims Gary 

Josephson, an online part-time MBA student. “I’m a child 

advocate in a world where many children are unable to have 

a voice and obtain the medical resources they desperately 

need. Due to the increasing costs of medical care, healthcare 

resource allocation is more competitive, leaving many children 

without appropriate healthcare.” Dr. Josephson is Chief of the 

Division of Pediatric Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery 

at Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. Within 

his own surgical specialty, Josephson is recognized for his 

expertise in pediatric nasal, sinus and airway diseases. Using 

both endoscopic and open laryngo-tracheal reconstructive 

techniques, he reconstructs narrow or blocked windpipes 

with cartilage grafts obtained from a child’s own rib cage. 

That allows the child to breath, speak and eat normally. It’s a 

subspecialization that attracts children and their families to his 

clinic from the region and beyond. 

Founded by Alfred I. Dupont, the Nemours Foundation 

employs 4100 professionals, including more than 420 specialty 

and subspecialty physicians and surgeons. As one of the 

nation’s largest health systems dedicated to children, it owns 

and operates hospitals and clinics in the Delaware Valley 

and surrounding areas, and in central and northern Florida. 

Supported by a single electronic medical record, physicians 

across subspecialties can provide clinical care, research, and 

education to the patients and diseases that they treat. The 

foundation’s Alfred I. Dupont supporting trust is valued at more 

than $4 billion. The group’s Florida pediatric otolaryngology 

division headed and reestablished by Josephson employs more 

than 40 people, and includes numerous clinical, research and 

educational programs that benefit children with common and 

complex diseases of the ears, nose, throat, head, and neck. 

“Our endowment and additional funding allow us to take 

care of children regardless of their families’ ability to pay,” he 

emphasizes. “But we must continuously compete for scarce 

resources. Up to a point I had been able to accomplish a lot 

without a business education. But I realized that I needed a 

foundation in business to continue—not only to run a large 

division but also to grow it. After just a year in the Isenberg 

School program, I’ve already improved my skill sets,” notes 

Josephson, who learned about the program through its affiliation 

with the American College of Physician Executives. 

“Medicine is changing rapidly,” Josephson emphasizes. “There’s 

a shortage of physicians and health-care costs are sky-rocketing. 

As physicians, we need to be facile in our knowledge of human 

disease and cost-conscious economic stewards of our resources. 

Our costing of technology is critical. For example, two pieces of 

equipment—one far more expensive than the other—can often 

do the same job quite safely and effectively. You have to be 

able to evaluate that fairly. Physicians with dual M.D. and MBA 

degrees have an advantage 

in understanding where 

costs can be saved without 

compromising patient 

care. With an MBA, I’ll be 

better prepared to meet 

the financial challenges 

ahead. It will help me to 

suggest alternatives and 

make a positive difference 

on behalf of our nation’s 

children. 

“In the Isenberg program, 

my financial accounting 

course with Professor 

Trafford was immediately 

useful,” observes 

Josephson. “It’s helped 

me to understand monthly 

financial reports associated 

with my division. There 

are financial people 

available, but now I can 

Dr. Gary Josephson 

communicate with them 

more effectively, better 

understand financial data, 

and utilize this information 

to ascertain our limited 

resources. Professor Fatel’s 

course in production and 

operations management has 

improved my understanding 

of workflow; it has helped 

me address our clinic’s 

challenges with patient 

throughput. A third course, 

in Information Technologies, 

has improved my understanding of the computer systems that 

we use daily, and the growing importance of IT in all aspects 

of patient care.” And Josephson credits Professor Robert 

Nakosteen’s course in business data analysis for helping him 

with research design and statistical analysis. 

“The faculty have been affable and accessible,” Josephson 

continues. “They’ve been extremely conscientious in responding 

and interacting with me. Interactions with my fellow students 

have also been positive. I’ve met some great people.” For a 

project in the course, Information Technology, Josephson 

opted for participation in a group of five students—all of them 

outside of the medical profession. “I don’t just want to meet 

other doctors,” emphasized Josephson, who earned his MD 

degree from the State University of New York, Downstate 

Medical School in 1990. “I want to meet people with all 

types of business backgrounds and experience.” Josephson 


joined Nemours in 2000 after serving as Chief of Pediatric 

Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University 

of Miami School of Medicine. He has authored numerous 

publications in the medical literature and has also co-authored a 

major text in his field. 

Does Dr. Josephson ever feel isolated because of his 

geographical distance from his fellow students and professors? 

“Not at all,” he responds. “I feel quite connected. And because 

I’ve been through a lot of schooling, I’m quite comfortable as a 

self-learner.” 

“To nonpractitioners, medicine can be a mystery—a language 

that they don’t understand,” notes Kimberly May ’08 MBA, a 

physician and retired U.S. Air Force colonel, who completed the 

online MBA program last August. “As a hospital administrator 

(Commander of the 89 th Medical Operations Squadron) in 2005 

at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, I felt the same way 

about the financial side of administration: I didn’t have a full 

grasp of what my financial people were talking about.” 

When she first enrolled in the online program in 2005, May, 

whose training is in internal medicine with a specialty in 

rheumatology, quickly got up to speed through Pam Trafford’s 

course in financial accounting. “In very little time, I was reading 

financials and dissecting budgets with much greater insight,” 

May recalls. “I knew what red flags to look for and was able to 

ask more informed questions about the numbers. Pam showed 

how the financial data fit within an accounting system. She was 

very strict about basic practice. But learning those practices 

and the overall system helped make complex problems more 

approachable. 

“Pam and the other online faculty members were extremely 

hands-on,” May recalls. That really surprised me. They paid 

great attention to every 

conversation in our 

stringed discussions. And 

I also got a great deal 

of personal attention. 

Professor Nakosteen, 

who taught statistics, 

was a fabulous educator, 

who communicated 

exactly what we needed 

to know. I also learned 

a great deal from my 

strategy professor, Les 

Ball. I had a peculiar 

way of thinking about 

strategy—a military 

approach to problem 

solving that tackled 

Dr. Kimberley May ’08 MBA 

problems in the same 

way. Professor Ball’s 

case-based course gave us an approach that was more adaptive 

to different strategic settings.” 

May’s fellow students, she continues, were another valuable 

resource. “They were extremely diverse—lawyers, chemists, 

physicians, bankers, and active duty people in the military as 

well. Their perspectives were different. I formed many great 

relationships and friendships.” 

While deployed from May through August of 2006 in the United 

Arab Emirates, May took Professor Nakosteen’s online course 

in statistics. “He was flexible—very willing to take hard-copy 

assignments by snail mail when I couldn’t get reliable internet,” 

she recalls. 

May earned her M.D. degree in 1987 from Wright State 

University’s School of Medicine in Dayton. After graduation, 

she joined the Air Force as a captain, completing her residency 

in internal medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near 

Dayton. Her 20-year career in the Air Force includes such job 

titles as chief of internal medicine and rheumatology services, 

chief and deputy chief of hospital services, Commander of 

the 89 th Medical Operations Squadron, Commander of 380 th 

Expeditionary Medical Group, and Deputy Commander 

of the 79 th Medical Group. May has also served overseas 

in Lakenheath, UK; Zaragoza, Spain; and the United Arab 

Emirates. 

In December of 2007, May, then Deputy Commander of the 

79 th Medical Group at Andrews, retired from the Air Force. Eight 

months later, she found herself in a decidedly different medical 

setting. After moving to a house that she and her husband 

built in the Berkshires, May began working three or four days 

each week in a clinic in Great Barrington and another 2 ½ 

days each month at the VA hospital in Northampton. “Right 

now my work is strictly medical (internal medicine/primary 

care and rheumatology), but I can’t help viewing the situation 

from an administrative/business point of view,” May remarks. 

“Practicing medicine in Western Massachusetts is challenging. 

Primary care services are difficult to find and oversubscribed. It’s 

a constant challenge to maximize efficiency, control costs, and 

ensure high-quality medical care. Massachusetts has a highly 

regulated medical environment. There’s a critical shortage of 

primary care physicians. It’s September and I’m already booked 

through November.” 

“Before taking the online MBA program, I was only a doctor. 

Now I’m also a leader and a more effective participant in my 

hospital’s administrative decisions,” observes Gustavo Stringel 

’08 MBA, surgeon-in-chief at the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital 

in Valhalla, New York. “My online MBA has given me a better 

understanding of business and marketing issues. In meetings, I’m 

able to make my case with more authority.” 

While most online MBA candidates never meet their fellow 

students offline, Stringel approached the program from a 


left to right: Lina Guertin M.D., ’08 MBA, Gary Kroll ’08 MBA, 

Gustavo Stringel M.D., ’08 MBA and Professor Les Ball 

different vantage: He enrolled in tandem with his wife, 

Lina Guertin ’08 MBA, a psychiatrist, who a year ago took a 

sabbatical from her post at a teaching hospital to complete the 

program. Beginning in the spring of 2005, the couple took a 

course each semester until the fall of 2007, when they ensured 

their graduation in May of 2008 by upping their course load to 

two courses per semester. “For couples interested in an online 

MBA, I recommend that they take the program together,” 

advises Guertin. “It relieves pressure on one another.” 

The couple learned about the Isenberg School program through 

their membership in the American College of Physician 

Executives, from which they had received 

certificates in medical management. “The 

Isenberg School was one of a few programs 

recommended by the ACPE,” notes Guertin. 

“Our choice was between getting a master’s 

degree in medical management at another 

school or a real MBA. After a discussing our 

options with the online program’s director 

of support services, MaryBeth Kimball, who 

was a tremendous resource for us throughout 

our online MBA, we decided to do the real 

thing.” 

“The online curriculum was extremely wellbalanced,” 

recalls Stringel. “We got off to 

a great start with Professor [Linda] Shea’s 

marketing course. It was immediately useful 

to me in discussions about my hospital’s 

marketing initiatives. With renewed 

confidence, we moved on to courses in 

statistics and finance. In both courses we 

got prompt, excellent feedback from our 

professors.” 

The MBA behind the mask: 

Gustavo Stringel ’08 MBA 

“We also gained much-appreciated exposure 

to the global economy,” notes Guertin. 

“One of our professors had us follow the 

global economy by getting us to regularly 

read The Financial Times.” “And we became 

more aware about outsourcing, which is a 

growing fact of life influencing hospitals and 

other medical organizations,” adds Stringel. 

“We welcome international diversity,” says 

Guertin. “Gustavo is from Mexico and I 

am from Canada. Taking our courses with 

students from Europe, India, and even military 

personnel in Iraq greatly enhanced our 

discussions and learning itself. That goes as 

well for our fellow students’ occupational 

diversity, which included lawyers, 

economists, and engineers, and many other 

professions.” 

Stringel’s greater fluency with medical 

economics and policy issues has dovetailed 

with his own expanding influence in 

his profession. In 2005, he was elected to the board 

of trustees of his profession’s leading international 

association, the Society of Laparendoscopic Surgeons. He 

is currently the society’s vice president and will become 

its president in 2009. 

In addition to his responsibilities with the Maria Fareri 

Children’s Hospital , Stringel is Professor of Surgery and 

Pediatrics at New York Medical College. He earned his 

M.D. from the National University of Mexico in Mexico 

City. Guertin is currently in private practice. Until the fall 

of 2007, she was assistant medical 

director of the Child Psychiatry Clinic 

and medical director of the Florence 

and Robert A. Rosen Wellness Center 

at North Shore University Hospital in 

Mahasset, New York. She earned her 

M.D. from the University of Ottawa. 

Last May, Stringel and Guertin traveled 

to Amherst to attend their Isenberg 

School graduation. “It was an amazing 

experience,” recalls Guertin. “The evening 

before our graduation, at a reception 

for the School’s MBA students, we met 

students and faculty members whom we 

had previously known only online. We 

socialized with MaryBeth and Associate 

Dean Berkowitz. And then we met perhaps 

our favorite faculty member, Dr. Nakosteen, 

who had taught us statistics.” By all 

accounts, Stringel, Guertin, and Professor 

Nakosteen were as delighted with one 

another in person as online. n 


Alumni Spotlight 

High-profile athletes on a Mission 

Bob Munroe ’82 

Bob Munroe ’82 

Athletes’ Skin Care Is His Mission 

“When you or I are at rest and exposed to the 

sun, we are at risk. For athletes in motion with 

sustained exposure, that risk is compounded,” 

observes Bob Munroe ‘82 president of the 

start-up firm MISSION Product, which 

brands itself as purveyor of the first Athlete- 

Engineered Skincare line. “We think of athletes 

as physically superior to the rest of us but their 

sustained head and neck exposure to the sun, 

profuse perspiration, and accelerated heart 

rate combine to increase their risk of sunburns 

and skin cancers,” observes the former Isenberg 

School marketing major. MISSION Product, 

which launched its clinically pure, preservative 

free product line, MISSION SKINCARE, in 

May, offers a starting lineup of eight skincare 

products: a sunscreen with SPF (sun protection 

factor) 30 and anti-sting technology, a longlasting 

anti-friction cream, a restorative foot gel, 

a reviving body gel for post-sun and post-wind 

exposure, and four SPF 15/20 lip balms. 

Serial entrepreneur and MISSION Product 

founder Josh Shaw, who recruited Munroe to 

the business, got the idea for the product line 

in 2007 from Charlie Engle, a superendurance 

athlete. Engle, who had just completed an 

111-day run across the Sahara, became 

MISSION Product’s founding athletic partner. 

Since then, enlisting athletes proactively in 

product innovation and development has 

been fundamental to the firm’s mission. Most 

athletes, for example, don’t use sunscreens 

because it stings their eyes and impairs their 

performance. How would you know that 

without engaging the athletes themselves? 

asks Munroe. “Athletes, we learned, had 

similar frustrations with the inefficiencies of 

moisturizers, anti-friction products, and other 

skin care items. 

“At MISSION Product, we do more than just 

listen; our product line is driven by athletes 

who share ownership in the business,” he 

emphasizes. When The CommonWealth 

interviewed Munroe in late August, 13 athletepartners 

had signed on with the firm. “They are 

extremely accomplished in their sports,” notes 

Munroe—high-profile athletes like two-time 

NBA MVP Steve Nash, Olympic gold medal 

swimmer Amanda Beard, Olympic gold-medal 

soccer star Mia Hamm, pro skate-boarder 

Ryan Sheckler, and extreme endurance athletes 

Hunter Kemper and Sarah Haskins. “We plan 


to grow the roster to 20.” As The Commonwealth went 

to press, Mission Skincare announced the addition of its 

newest athlete partner, tennis star Serena Williams. 

An innovative business model. The firm’s business model 

is no less innovative than its products. “Our partnerathletes 

participate in an innovative compensation 

structure that includes ownership equity in the company 

and royalties on the development of new products,” 

Munroe remarks. “A portion of MISSION Product’s 

profits also help support each athlete’s charity.” The 

athletes, he continues, are intimately involved 

in product innovation. When their suggestions 

lead to a product or its improvement, they 

receive royalties. “Finally, we create a fouryear 

charity platform plan for each athlete’s 

charity, which we, in turn, highlight on our web 

site.” The current roster of thirteen charities 

includes the Steve Nash Foundation’s services 

to children affected by poverty, illness, and 

abuse; Charlie Engle’s H 2 

O Africa Foundation, 

which supports sustainable, integrated water programs; 

and Mia Hamm’s Foundation, which focuses on bone 

marrow transplant recipients and young women in sports. 

The mission of MISSION Product, emphasizes Munroe, 

is to do good while doing well. It’s all about creating 

positive relationship markets between the company, its 

athlete-owners, and consumers. 

“We develop innovative product formulas driven by 

athlete testing. And we work with some of the best labs in 

the country in outsourcing manufacturing domestically,” 

notes Munroe. To that end, MISSION Product contracts 

with three U.S. based product labs, described by Munroe 

as proactive and high-powered. 

“We have targeted 30,000 distribution points in the U.S. 

for our products. We expect to reach 12,000 of those points 

by the third quarter of 2009,” Munroe continues. “Our 

targets include big box sports specialty retailers like Dick’s 

and The Sports Authority; and mall-based stores like Foot 

Locker and Champs.” Other retail partners include Olympia 

Sports, City Sports, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Hibbetts, 

Sports Chalet, and the Eastbay catalog, as well as many 

golf, tennis, running, ski, and fitness locations. MISSION 

Product, he adds, is also exploring less 

traditional channels like the military. And 

it is forging strategic partnerships with 

Division 1A teams like Texas A&M , where 

it provides a full line of products, including 

gallon-size pump containers for locker 

room and sideline use. “We expect to be 

in Mexico and Canada in early 2009 and 

overseas by the first quarter of 2010,” adds 

Munroe. And we will continue to grow our 

business on line at www.missionproduct. 

com while creating buzz there and on 

social networking sites.” 

Mission founder Josh Shaw 

For Munroe and MISSION Product, distribution and 

growth are mapped out to a science. “It’s all about 

seizing first-mover advantage,” he observes. “The details, 

the precision, and the execution are crucial to capturing 

the market. I don’t know any other way to do it, after 

years of product management and marketing experience 

at Reebok, Procter and Gamble and Johnson & Johnson,” 

he remarks. 

His brilliant career. After beginning his carreer with 

15 years in consumer packaged goods with companies 

including P&G, J&J, Munroe joined Reebok in 

1997 as Vice President of Sales. By the summer 

of 1999, Bob was SVP/GM of Reebok North 

America. He was promoted again to President of 

Reebok USA in January 2006, before deciding 

to leave the firm in the fall of 2007. In February 

of 2006, Reebok’s long-time CEO Paul Fireman 

stepped down when the firm was purchased 

by the German footwear giant Adidas. For the 

next 18 months, Munroe helped lead critical 

integration efforts between both large brands. “With 

much of that accomplished and after ten great years at the 

firm, I felt that it was time for a new challenge,” 

notes Munroe. 

It was only a few months later, as part of the due diligence 

process for MISSION Product, that founder Josh Shaw 

called me out of the blue,” Munroe recalls. “We hit it off. 

From December until July 2008, I consulted for MISSION 

Product by helping shape all aspects of our go-to-market 

strategy, including packaging, pricing, distribution and 

our athlete-partnerships. In August of 2008, I accepted the 

offer to become Mission’s president.” 

My wife Erin (Heath) ’82 and I met in Marc Weinberger’s 

Promotional Strategy course,” recalls Munroe. “For the 

course’s final project, student teams had to launch (on paper) 

new products.” Professor Weinberger’s grade book reveals 

that the future couple worked together on a promotional 

strategy for a powdered liquor. The Munroes, who live 

in Shrewsbury with their son and daughter, have stayed 

connected over the years to the Isenberg School professor. 

In 2007, they established the Munroe Family Scholarship, 

presented annually to four deserving students in good 

academic standing. 

Twenty-seven years after Marc 

Weinberger’s class, Munroe is launching 

and promoting a new business and 

product line that is leveraging his skills 

and years of experience toward a worthy 

and viable business. “It will make a 

positive difference for our own athletepartners 

and their charities. And our 

product line will bring value to millions of 

consumers in the years ahead. What could 

be better than that?” n 



Kristen Kuliga ’91 

On The Art of Negotiation and 

Adding Business Value 

“In the National Football League, a player’s career 

averages less than 3 1/2 years. A team can cut 

a player at any time,” observes UMass Amherst 

graduate and NFL player agent Kristen Kuliga ’91. 

During a player’s first three years, his team has 

exclusive rights to his services, Kuliga continues. 

And throughout their careers, players are subject to 

intense physical and medical scrutiny that can yield 

negative projections about the arc of their future 

performance and their careers. With that in mind, 

“my prerogative as a negotiator on behalf of my 

clients is very much about trying to negotiate the 

most guaranteed money up front or in the earlier 

years of the contract,” she emphasizes. 

Kristen Kuliga is one of about 30 women among 

the 800 to 1,000 registered agents who represent 

players in the NFL. For most of those agents, 

representing one or more players is more aspiration 

than reality. Not so for Kuliga and the firm that she 

owns and operates, K Sports & Entertainment, which 

represents Save Rocca of the Philadelphia Eagles, 

Alfred Fincher of the Washington Redskins, Ben 

Graham of the New Orleans Saints, Clifton Dawson 

of the Indianapolis Colts, and other players. 

Kuliga majored in economics and political science 

at UMass Amherst, but sport management professor 

Lisa Pike Masteralexis proved a pivotal influence. 

In her senior year, Kuliga took Masteralexis’ course 

in sport law, which the future NFL agent found 

inspiring. “Agency was one of many topics in the 

course that excited Kristen,” remembers Masteralexis, 

who is a certified player agent with the Major League 

Players Association. “After class, Kristen was a 

frequent visitor to my office to discuss academic and 

professional issues,” recalls Masteralexis, who had 

earned a J.D. degree from Suffolk University Law 

School. She wrote a letter recommending Kuliga to 

the school, which she joined in September after her 

graduation from UMass Amherst. 

Kuliga’s most celebrated client remains retired 

quarterback Doug Flutie. Back in 2000, it was 

Flutie himself who encouraged Kuliga to obtain 

her certification as an agent from the NFL 

Players Association with the promise that the 

then Buffalo Bills quarterback would become her 

first client. Flutie had long admired Kuliga’s legal 

and administrative prowess as an employee of 

Woolf Associates, the now defunct Boston-based 

sports agency that had represented him and other 

megastars like Larry Bird and Carl Yazstremski. At 

Woolf, where she had worked from 1994 through 

2000, Kuliga held positions as general council 

and vice president of athlete marketing. She had 

played key supporting roles in renegotiating Flutie’s 

contract with the Bills and the CFL’s Toronto 

Argonauts, and in establishing the Doug Flutie, Jr. 

Foundation for Autism in his son’s name. She had 

also helped launch Flutie Flakes, a breakfast cereal 

whose sales supported the foundation. 


In 2001, Kuliga, who had just gained her certification as 

an NFL agent, left Woolf to found her own firm, K Sports 

& Entertainment, with Flutie as her first client. It was an 

auspicious start: Flutie, who had just been cut by the Bills, was 

in play as a free agent. Kuliga responded by negotiating a $33 

million contract on his behalf with the San Diego Chargers. 

Four years later, she negotiated deals that brought Flutie to the 

New England Patriots and then launched Flutie’s broadcasting 

career with ABC Sports and ESPN. 

In addition, Kuliga has negotiated endorsements and other 

marketing opportunities for Patriots and other NFL players and 

for Major League Baseball players as well. In 2004, Kuliga 

sold her business to the Worcester-based celebrity marketing 

services company, Paid Inc. At Paid, she continued her work 

as an NFL agent and ran celebrity services that included 

developing the firm’s music artist business (including fanoriented 

web sites for Aerosmith, Patti LaBelle, Mixed Martial 

Arts, and Keith Lockhart). She also managed special events 

for Flutie’s foundation. In the spring of 2007, she regained 

ownership of her firm from Paid, while retaining a consulting 

relationship with the Worcester firm. 

Adding value to her business. Today, K Sports & Entertainment 

offers three core services: NFL player representation; 

representation of athletes in their marketing relationships with 

corporations; and the coordination of charitable events. Kuliga’s 

marketing services have included several endorsement and 

appearance deals for Tim Wakefield, endorsements for Doug 

Flutie with Eastern Bank and Reebok, and appearances by 

Cleveland Cavalier Wally Szerbiak on behalf of Vitamin Water. 

In the arena of charitable events, Kuliga continues to play a major 

role in initiatives associated with the Flutie Foundation. And K 

Sports & Entertainment has coordinated charitable events for a 

variety of causes, such as San Diego Charger Antonio Cromartie’s 

work on behalf of Camp Hope, Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett’s 

advocacy for Childrens Hospital, and Paul Pierce’s Truth Fund. 

Kaliga on recruiting and negotiation. “Recruiting is the most 

time-consuming, challenging aspect of my work,” emphasizes 

Kuliga, who meets with prospective clients and their families 

throughout the U.S. (Her interview with The CommonWealth 

came on the heels of a recruiting trip to San Diego.) Fall and 

the holiday season are especially busy for recruiting, she notes. 

“May through July and fall are prime seasons for events,” adds 

Kuliga, who lives in Boston with her husband Roger Coe ’79, 

a former Isenberg School finance major and UMass lacrosse 

player. Those diverse activities bring greater seasonal balance 

to her portfolio of services. 

“Women negotiate a bit differently than men,” continues 

Kuliga. “I believe that men often put their egos aside in dealing 

with women and let their guard down a bit more,” she remarks. 

For Kuliga, listening and sales skills are also critical. “They 

allow you to identify opportunities and pursue them in your 

clients’ best interests. I have the mindset that I can always do 

more for my clients.” Kuliga also credits her UMass background 

in economics for econometric tools that help her analyze data 

and support her arguments on behalf of clients. 

Former New England Patriot and Kuliga client 

Larry Izzo (center) and friends 

For Kuliga, another touchstone with UMass Amherst has been 

her periodic welcoming of sport management students as 

interns. “Kristen takes on one, sometimes two, of our students 

each year,” remarks Masteralexis. For many of them, it’s a 

ticket to immersion in Boston’s professional sports community, 

she says. Back in 1991, through Masteralexis, Kuliga met 

fellow UMass senior Mike Tannenbaum ’91 (accounting), with 

whom she would one day do business. Both took sport law 

from Masteralexis and both went on to earn J.D. degrees. In 

2005, while successfully negotiating a contract with the New 

York Jets on behalf of her client, Ben Graham, Kuliga found 

herself across the table from Tannenbaum, who a year later 

would become the Jets’ general manager. “It was heartening 

to see,” observes Kuliga, “that with our UMass education, law 

degrees, and strong work ethics, we had made it to the same 

professional negotiating table.” n 

Doug Flutie and 

Doug Flutie, Jr. 



Andy Oleksak ’79MBA 

From the Tree to Thee: 

Isenberg School Alumnus Leads 

Expanding Lumber Products Business 

“My Isenberg School degree has 

been of great value to me and to 

my business,” 

observes Andy Oleksak ’79 MBA, president 

of Oleksak Lumber Company in Westfield. “It 

has given me a better handle on the overall 

management of the business, and helped me 

with budgeting and investing. Besides, I enjoy 

what I am doing.” Founded in 1922 by Oleksak’s 

grandfather, the family-owned business harvests, 

mills, manufactures, and sells lumber and lumber 

products from its own forests and other sources in 

Western Massachusetts. Andy’s brother, Dan ’70 

’74 M.S., whose UMass degrees are in forestry, 

runs the forestry end of the business. Andy 

manages its milling, manufacturing, and sales. 

The Oleksaks obtain their timber from their 

own 3,000 acres of timberland in Western 

Massachusetts and from private landowners, 

municipalities, state forests, and watersheds in 

Berkshire and Hampden counties. “We specialize 

in native New England woods and do our best 

to incorporate every species into our program,” 

observes Andy. That includes hardwoods like 

ash, aspen, birch, cherry, maples, and oaks; and 

softwoods like hemlock, pine, and spruce. The 

company, he notes, handles two million feet of 

saw-logs each year. 

Most of the Oleksaks’ timberlands are enrolled in 

current use programs and subject to precise forest 

management plans. “We take our responsibilities 

to the environment very seriously,” remarks 

Andy. “Our selective harvesting and reforestation 

methods ensure that our forests will prove 

sustainable for future generations. Dan’s advanced 

education in forestry, his experience as a certified 

forestry consultant and registered surveyor, and 

his active involvement on local conservation 

commissions inform all of our decisions about 

husbandry and logging.” 

After extraction, the logs arrive by truck at the 

Oleksaks’ expanded Westfield complex, where 

they are milled, dried, planed, and otherwise 


transformed for sale to various 

wood products markets. The 

Westfield operation includes 

a fully automated sawmill, 

dry kiln, milling facility, pallet 

lumber cut-up operation, 

bark mulch business, and 

lumber yard. “Many sawmills 

are just saw mills,” observes 

Oleksak. “We go beyond that 

by using our sawmill and 

planing facility as tools to 

add value as a manufacturer 

of specialized products. “We 

utilize our low-grade lumber 

to build pallets, and the 

better grades to manufacture 

specialized lumber like 

tongue and groove boards, 

shiplap, dimensional, and hardwood and softwood flooring. 

We also manufacture and sell industrial lumber to building 

materials suppliers and window manufacturers in Eastern 

and Western Massachusetts. From time to time, some of our 

lumber finds its way to unanticipated venues, like holding 

up a warship in dry dock from a recent mission in Iraq.” 

Nothing—absolutely nothing—goes to waste, emphasizes 

Oleksak. “Our motto is From the tree to thee,” he remarks. 

“Our pine may wind up as building materials for flooring, 

ceilings, walls, and sheds. Our kiln-dried hardwoods like 

cherry, maple, birch, ash, and oak find their way to wood 

hobbyists. Grade oak logs go to brokers, who sell them 

to Canada.” Canadians are quick to spot imperfect wood. 

They have X-Ray vision, cautions Oleksak, who himself 

displays encyclopedic prowess in identifying and “reading” 

Andy and his daughter Charlotte ’08 

wood cross-sections. Low-grade 

timber, he adds, contributes to 

Oleksak Lumber’s bottom line 

as essential material for pallets, 

skids, and pulp. 

Four months ago, when oil 

prices spiked, Oleksak expected 

to cash in on soaring demand 

for firewood. Since then, 

however, he’s been so busy 

filling record-setting orders 

from his building industry 

customers that he hasn’t had 

the time to invest in firewood. 

Isn’t the building industry 

supposed to be on the skids? 

The unprecedented demand 

for his wood, he says, has 

been a mystery. Some of his 

competitors, in fact, have gone under. Perhaps their loss is 

Oleksak’s gain. 

Bark mulch, another expanding Oleksak product, is 

increasingly popular in landscaping, including playgrounds. 

Oleksak wholesales and retails bark mulch and colored 

chips in either red, black, or brown. “We’re also doing a 

much better job of capturing sawdust,” he notes. “In the 

past year, our production has increased by 50% thanks 

to the addition of a screen to our chipper.” Why sawdust? 

“It’s for the local farmers and the ‘horsie people’—more 

precisely for their cows and horses, who bed in the stuff,” 

he remarks. 

Before earning his MBA degree, Oleksak was a high 

school math teacher in Westfield. “I needed the MBA to 

leave teaching and to devote my full energies to the family 

business,” he confesses. “The MBA sharpened my skills and 

gave me an edge with suppliers, wholesalers, attorneys, town 

officials, and others. It also improved my self-confidence.” 

Last May, Oleksak’s daughter, Charlotte ’08, graduated 

magna cum laude from UMass Amherst’s Commonwealth 

College, earning a B.A. in Spanish and Psychology. Charlotte, 

her father notes, couldn’t be happier as a caseworker with the 

Center for Human Development in Springfield. To get the job, 

she excelled in a job interview conducted in Spanish. 

Will Oleksak Lumber continue as a family business after 

the brothers retire? “Our kids don’t seem to be interested,” 

muses Oleksak. “Instead, I plan to work out some kind of 

arrangement with a couple of employees who have worked 

here for years. They share our work ethic and integrity. The 

business will remain in good hands.” n 


ISENBERG SCHOOL CLASS NOTES 

Your Classmates Want to Hear from You! 

Share your accomplishments with the Isenberg School alumni 

network—35,000-strong—by e-mailing The CommonWealth 

at ariel@som.umass.edu or by sending your update to The 

CommonWealth, Isenberg School of Management, University 

of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003. 

Charles Dockendorff ’76 

(Accounting) of Hanover, MA is 

Executive Vice president and CFO of 

the global healthcare products firm 

Covidien in Mansfield. 

Walter Berger ’77 (Accounting) has 

been named executive vice president 

and chief financial officer at Leap 

Wireless International, Inc., a wireless 

communications company in San 

Diego. Walter lives with his wife, 

Susan Berger ’76 (Finance), in 

Manhattan. 

Thomas Fil ’79 (Accounting), 

and Marilyn Gorman are happy to 

announce their marriage on June 2, 

2007. A manager with the accounting 

firm, Meyers Brothers Kalicka in 

Holyoke, Thomas is one of five 

children who graduated from UMass 

Amherst during the 1970s and 1980s. 

His siblings are Kathleen Fil ’82, 

Elizabeth (Fil) Vachula ’76, Stephen 

Fil ’84, and Mary (Fil) Kirk ’79, ’97. 

Timothy Butler ’81 M.S. 

(Accounting) has been named 

president and chief executive officer 

of the Legal Broadcast Network, an 

internet media company in Scottsdale, 

Arizona. 

Scott Pollard ’81 (Finance) has 

been named vice president and 

chief financial officer of the power 

generation business at GE Energy 

in Schenectady, NY. Scott lives in 

Rexford, NY with his wife, Catherine. 

Dennis Mannion ’82 (Sport 

Management) has completed his 

first season as chief operations 

officer of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Dennis, who lives in Pasadena with 

his wife, Pamela, and five children, 

joined the Dodgers after eight years 

of employment with the Baltimore 

Ravens, most recently as senior 

Vice President/Business Ventures. 

Dennis also spent 16 years with the 

Philadelphia Phillies, last serving as 

VP/Marketing. 

Darryl Hubbard ’83 (Management) 

recently promoted to global 

procurement manager for the 

reference labs division of IDEXX 

Laboratories, a leader in companion 

animal health, which operates 

a growing network of over 40 

veterinary labs worldwide. Darryl 

lives in Damariscotta, Maine, with 

wife his wife, Sara, and their children. 

The couple celebrated their 25th 

wedding anniversary this fall. Their 

daughter, Melissa, graduated from 

the University of Maine at Orono in 

2007 and is employed by IDEXX as 

a marketing associate for the digital 

imaging business. Their son, Mark, is 

entering his junior year at Fitchburg 

State College as a communications 

major (in film production and writing) 

and will study abroad in London next 

spring. Darryl would like to hear from 

fellow UMass and Pike (Pi Kappa 

Alpha, Theta Mu) alumni at 4hubbs@ 

tidewater.net. 

Benjamin Magoun ’83 (HTM) 

writes, “After graduation, I co-owned 

JBO’s Roast Beef and then Buffalo 

Bills. My wife, Donna, and I had two 

children and tried the suburban life in 

Boston. In a moment of deep thought, 

it occurred to me that I had never met 

anyone who had retired and moved 

from Boston to Florida. Looking 

for that edge, I decided to get to 

Florida ahead of the rest of you. I’m 

interested in starting a local alumni 

chapter here in Naples. Let me know 

if you are likeminded, on your way 

here or just interested in checking in 

at macgowen07@embargmail.com.” 

Barrie (Freeman) Rappaport ’83 

(Marketing) writes, “A big hello to 

my classmates from the early/mid 

’80s. I’m interested in catching up 

with some of my old friends from 

Leach, SDT (and other Greeks), and 

marketing/business classes. I live in 

the Chicago suburbs with my husband 

of almost 15 years and our two 

beautiful girls, 13 and 9. I’m working 

from home as a product manager 

for an information/technology firm 

in New Jersey. My work focuses on 

consumer market research—so those 

classes did pay off. My husband is 

in the ASI (promotional products) 

industry. Life is crazy but we 

wouldn’t have it any other way. I can 

be reached at bifrap1@comcast.net” 

In June, Charles Steedman ’84 

(Sport Management) was named 

senior vice president and general 

manager for Northland AEG LLC, 

a sports and entertainment company 

in Hartford. Steedman, a former Red 

Sox executive with New England 

Sports Ventures from 2001 to 2008, 

coordinates Northland’s operations 

in Hartford, including managing the 

city’s XL Center and Rentschler Field 

and Hartford’s American Hockey 

League team, the Wolf Pack. 

Christopher J. Allen ’87 (HTM) is 

resident manager with the Boston 

Marriott Cambridge. In the early 

1990s, he spent five years on the 

HTM (then HRTA) faculty. He also 

spent two years at the Cornell School 

of Hotel Administration, where one 

of his projects was to integrate parts 

of the school’s curriculum with the 

operation of the Statler Hotel. Chris 

lives in Medford with his wife and 

two children. 

James Liston III ’87 (HTM) is a 

nationally prominent strength and 

conditioning coach and the founder 

and president of CATZ (www. 

catzsports.com) in Pasadena, CA. 

Jim has been featured as a trainer 

of athletes in The New York Times, 

Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and 

Oxygen. 

Timothy Smith ’87 (Finance) has 

retired after a successful mortgage 

career of 20 years and opened 

Smile-Therapy. He writes, “Smile- 

Therapy received two awards for 

its outstanding website from the 

famous Coolsiteoftheday.com and 

Coolpick.com. Check it out for fun, 

tips, information, and great wisdom at 

smile-therapy.com. Everyone needs 

Smile-Therapy. They just may not 

know it yet!” 

Thomas Senecal ’88 (Accounting) 

has been appointed executive vice 

president, chief financial officer 

and treasurer of Peoples Bank, 

a community bank in Western 

Massachusetts. As a CPA, he 

possesses over 20 years of banking 

and financial services experience. 

Previously he was senior vice 

president, CFO, and treasurer for 

Florence Savings Bank. 

Michael Gwozdz ’90 (Finance) 

writes, “I was recently named chief 

underwriting officer-Energy for 

Liberty Mutual’s newly formed 

specialty lines business unit in 

Boston. My wife, Lauren ’89 

(HTM), and I still live in Medway 

and can be reached at umass90@ 

verizon.net. 

Patrick Lavoie ’90 (Accounting) 

announces the birth of twin baby 

girls, Genevieve Anna and Maeve 

Veronica, born on December 31, 

2007, in Weymouth. 

Daniel Newton ’90 (Accounting) of 

Boston is director of international tax 

accounting for the global healthcare 

products firm Covidien in Mansfield. 


Scott (Macey) Gordon ’93 

(Marketing) works for Daniel S. 

Allen Financial Planning Services 

in Brattleboro, Vermont, an office 

of MetLife. He was recently named 

MetLife’s Rookie Financial Planner 

of the Year for his outstanding 

performance as a newcomer to the 

financial planning business. He 

received his MBA from Babson 

College and continues to be 

involved with Babson’s coaching for 

leadership. 

Jay Monahan ’95 M.S. (Sport 

Management) was named 

Executive Director of the PGA 

Tour last June. Jay, his wife, 

Susan, and their two daughters 

have relocated from Belmont, 

Massachusetts to the Ponte 

Vedra Beach, Florida area. Jay 

was previously Executive Vice 

President of the Fenway Sports 

Group. 

Peter Wolly ’95 (HTM) and Dana 

Horowitz are proud to announce 

the birth of twins, Jordan Scott and 

Brooke Eva Wolly, born on April 9, 

2008 in Stamford, Connecticut. 

Alexander Kasendorf ’96 (Sport 

Mgt.) and his wife, Christina, are 

proud to announce the birth of a baby 

boy, Noah Charles, born on February 

20, 2008, in Los Angeles, California. 

Robert Braathe’96 (HTM) was 

recently promoted to the full time 

business faculty at SUNY Delhi/ 

Schenectady County Community 

College branch in Schenectady, NY. 

He has been teaching for the past two 

semesters there as an adjunct, and 

most recently worked as a visiting 

professor at SUNY Cobleskill. 

Valerie Sweeney ’96 (Marketing) 

was promoted in January 2008 to vice 

president at ERC Wiping Products 

in Lynn. Before her promotion, 

Valery had been with the company 

for 12 years and was its director 

of marketing and sales. The firm 

supplies towels, wiping rags, and 

microfiber cloths to carpet cleaning 

and restoration professionals across 

the country. 

Brian Roughan ’98 (Accounting), 

of Cambridge is director of business 

development with LiquidPiston in 

West Hartford. Brian, David Mason 

’99 (Accounting), and Shayhan 

Mozaffar ’03 (Accounting) are the 

principal contributors to the Isenberg 

School’s annual Young Alum Award, 

which assists outstanding accounting 

students who have worked throughout 

their academic careers. 

Kathrine Grogan ’00 (Accounting), 

four-time Water Polo All-America 

selection at UMass Amherst, was 

named to the Collegiate Water Polo 

Association Hall of Fame. She 

lives in Irvine, California, with her 

husband, Oscar Alaniz. 

Emily Livingston ’00 (Finance and 

Operations Management) and Chris 

Mirakian ’98 were married in September 

2008 in Newport, Rhode Island. 

Shana Orczyk ’00 (Management) 

received an MBA in global financial 

analysis from Bentley College in May 

2007. Shana works at Peak Financial 

Management in Waltham. Formerly, 

she was an equity portfolio analysthedge 

funds at Russell Investments. 

She writes, “After personally 

experiencing the turmoil associated 

with working directly for a hedge 

fund, and taking some time to explore 

the West Coast, I’m happy to be 

back east. My new role allows me to 

directly influence and make investment 

decisions for the firm’s portfolio 

of over $400m. Shana appeared on 

CNBC’s Power Lunch in August. 

Brian Appel ’01 (Marketing) is 

Director of Promotions with the 

Phoenix Media/Communications 

Group in Boston. 

Adam Fresia ’01 (Accounting) and 

Kathleen Forrest ’99 are proud to 

announce the birth of a baby boy, 

Jack William Fresia, born on January 

19, 2007, in Sacramento, California. 

Joshua Hecht ’01 (HTM) is an 

attorney with Caplan, Hecht and 

Mendel in New Haven. Joshua 

practices in the areas of real estate, 

environmental, hotel/restaurant, 

personal injury, estate planning, and 

business law. He is licensed to practice 

law in Connecticut and New York. 

You can contact him at 203-772-0070 

and at Jhecht@chsm-law.com 

Nate Sustick ’02 (Management) 

brings business and culinary 

skills to Paul and Elizabeth’s 

Natural Foods Restaurant in 

Northampton—a restaurant owned 

and founded by his parents in 

On November 2, Christina Calvaneso ’03, a strategy and 

operations consultant with Deloitte Consulting LLP in New York 

City, successfully completed the ING NYC Marathon as a member 

of the Team for Kids charity and Team Deloitte. At the Isenberg 

School, Christina majored in Finance and Operations Management. 

In her senior year, she was honored with the campus-wide 21 st 

Century Scholar Award. 

Here are Christina’s impressions of the event: 

“Despite a last minute injury that kept me from training for the last 

two weeks, the energy of this amazing city pushed me to exceed 

my personal best, completing the marathon in 5:07 hours. The 

experience of running through all 5 boroughs to millions of cheers 

provided the adrenaline to block out pain and enjoy this race with a 

smile on my face the entire way! Though I was unable to walk down 

a single flight of stairs the next day, I wouldn’t trade the experience 

for anything. And yes, I would do it again!” 

1978. Nate, like his parents, has 

received training from master 

Japanese chef Hiroshi Hayashi. 

Brooke Daly ’03 (Finance & 

Operations Management) is a human 

resource administrator with the 

Phoenix Media/Communications 

Group in Boston. 

Michael Alden ’04 (Finance), a 

senior auditor with Ernst & Young in 

Boston, and Maria Franco ’06 were 

married in July in Worcester. 

Brady Chianciola ’05 (Finance) has 

been named assistant vice president, 

regional manager of Peoples Bank. 

He completed the bank’s management 

development program and previously 

served as branch manager at its 

Chicopee office. He is responsible 

for overseeing daily operations, sales, 

and service activities of the East 

Longmeadow, Holyoke, Longmeadow, 

Springfield, and Westfield offices. 

Jessica Stelmok ’05 (Sport 

Management) and Daniel Sabourin 

are happy to announce their 

engagement. The wedding ceremony 

will take place on August 1, 2009. 

The two met through friends and were 

engaged on February 28th, 2008. 

Paula (Sossen) Lawson ’08 MBA, 

who earned her MBA degree online 

last May in the Isenberg School’s 

Part-Time MBA Program, died 

unexpectedly in September at age 

49. Paula, who lived in Middletown, 

Connecticut with her husband 

and son, was associate provost of 

Wesleyan University. She also leaves 

a twin sister, Nina Sossen, who is 

Web Communications Director at 

UMass Amherst. In a profile two 

years ago in the CommonWealth, 

Lawson had initially voiced 

skepticism toward online education. 

“How can such an approach succeed 

without face-to-face interchanges?” 

she asked. To Lawson’s surprise, 

her online MBA experience proved 

deeply rewarding: “Frankly, I was 

shocked by the richness and depth 

of the online format with its wealth 

of deeply layered well organized 

material,” observed the dedicated 

educator. 

The CommonWealth 19 17

x 

Around the School 

Jack ’57 and Suzy Welch 

Visit the Isenberg School 

“Doing great in school— 

graduating with high grades—is 

extremely important. 

Your chances of launching a successful 

career go way up the curve,” 

emphasized Jack Welch ’57 to a packed 

Isenberg School classroom of 85 student 

overachievers on September 15. Jack and 

Suzy Welch—his wife and coauthor— 

were on the 

UMass Amherst 

campus to 

visit with 

Jack Welch 

Scholars from 

the Isenberg 

School and 

the College of 

Engineering. 

The Welch 

Scholarships 

provide full Jack ’57 and Suzy Welch 

funding 

for their recipients throughout their 

undergraduate years. The former 

chairman and CEO of General Electric 

also met with students from Salem High 

School—recipients of the John and 

Grace Welch Scholarships, which Jack 

established in memory of his parents. 

Members of the Isenberg School’s honor 

societies also attended the question-andanswer 

session with the Welches. 

Hallmarks of Success and Leadership. 

“At work, overdeliver,” Jack Welch 

told the students. “Give your boss new 

insights; make your boss look smarter.” 

Be authentic; be yourself, he continued. 

And because you’re going to work 

harder than anyone else, find work that 

you are passionate about—work that you 

stay committed to. 

Effective leaders, Welch continued, 

have abundant energy and the ability to 

energize others. They are decisive and 

bring things to completion. They also 

have personal resilience, emphasized 

Suzy Welch. Success requires a 

willingness to risk and rebound from 

failure. Ironically, fear of letting yourself 

fail is an obstacle to success. 

As a leader, you need to relentlessly 

upgrade your team—to differentiate it 

by its strengths, observed Welch. To 

that end, regular and frank evaluation 

of employees is crucial. Reward and 

motivate good performers in the middle; 

eliminate the worst; and upgrade the 

best. “At GE my job was to find out 

who the real leaders were—to identify 

the 750 top performers and move them 

into leadership positions,” he recalled. 

Promising 

employee 

leaders identified 

by Welch could 

find themselves 

deployed to any 

part of the larger 

GE organization. 

“I used to 

tell managers 

in charge of 

different GE 

businesses, 

“You rent those 

employees; I own them.” 

It is counterproductive to dwell on the 

so-called work-life balance, Jack Welch 

insisted. Instead, be clear about work-life 

choices and accept their consequences, 

Jack and Suzy agreed. “You need to 

know what you’re getting into,” Suzy 

continued. “I have always worked full 

time; It is something that I need to do. 

I also have four kids. When you have 

children, you work that much harder.” 

When it is published next spring, Suzy’s 

new book 10-10-10 (Scribner) will help 

its readers tackle difficult decisions by 

viewing the implications of choices over 

ten-minute, ten-month, and ten-year 

time horizons. Viewing decisions in 

those terms, noted Suzy, can yield very 

different outcomes and choices. 

A Watershed Day on Wall Street. The 

Welchs’ campus visit coincided with 

a momentous day on Wall Street. That 

morning, the investment bank Lehman 

Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection. 

The night before the Bank of America 

had made a commitment to purchase the 

ailing investment giant Merrill Lynch. 

The international insurance firm AIG 

was also on the ropes. “Only two of the 

major investment banks are left. We 

are witnessing 

a fundamental 

change where 

commercial 

and investment 

banking are 

coming together,” 

emphasized 

Welch. Who 

would have 

thought this likely 

six months ago?” 

According to 

Welch, Merrill 

University of Massachusetts Amherst 

Isenberg 

School of Management 

Annual Report 2008 

Building 

The Isenberg 

Advantage 

Jack ’57 and Suzy Welch 

with The Isenberg School’s 

Jack Welch Scholars 

Lynch employees cannot look back: 

they must move quickly to embrace 

the values and culture of their new 

employer, Bank of America. “They 

must perform like hell; they must love 

their employer,” observed Welch. 

“Being acquired can be like a death 

to employees; you have to adapt to 

someone else’s rules and regulations. 

You have to look forward. A firm’s 

culture really counts when you make 

an acquisition. Lehman employees, 

on the other hand, will face a different 

challenge—they’ll be out on the streets. 

Ultimately, a company cannot benefit 

society unless that business is itself 

successful, he continued. “As a company, 

you are basically responsible for winning. 

There’s a book on that,” he quipped, 

referring obliquely to his best seller with 

Suzy, Winning (HarperCollins). “When 

you win,” he added, “everybody wins. 

You pay taxes and you give back to your 

community. But first, you must create 

healthy, growing jobs.” 

Jack makes a point. 

Jack and Suzy with the 

Isenberg School’s 

Welch Scholars 


Reflections on Cars, Planes, 

and Finance: Jack Smith ’60 

Visits the Isenberg School 

“We are rapidly moving toward the next 

step in auto engines—electric hybrids,” 

emphasized retired GM and Delta Airlines 

chairman Jack Smith ’60 during his 

October 7 visit to the Isenberg School. 

One of GM’s answers to the challenge 

is the Chevy Volt, which will arrive on 

the market in 2010. The Volt will have 

an initial sticker price of around $40,000 

and a first-year production run of up to 

60,000 cars. Its batteries will provide up to 

40 miles of continuous electricity before 

a small internal combustion engine and 

generator kick in to recharge them. “A big 

issue for all electric cars will be how you 

price the batteries,” Smith told students in 

Tom O’Brien’s Business History course. 

“Battery replacements for Toyota’s Prius 

run from $2,500 to $3,000. That is sizeable, 

but we will get through that and 

other challenges. Electric cars will be a big 

change for America.” 

For the past seven years, GM has devoted 

two-thirds of its research budget to fuel 

cell development. “Seven years ago, 

our director of research predicted that 

fuel cells would be on the market in ten 

years,” Smith told the students. “Today, 

his answer is the same: ten years from 

now. The oil industry uses a different 

number—50 years or so. The big challenge 

with fuel cells is not in the technology 

itself but in creating the national 

infrastructure that would allow for refueling. 

We don’t have one.” 

According to Smith, the energy economy 

has also rocked the airlines industry. 

“Traditionally, the basic philosophy 

of the airlines was that people flew on 

the basis of price. That’s pretty much 

changed,” noted Smith. “European 

airlines used to do much better than 

their American counterparts on service, 

but that’s deteriorated too. In the airline 

industry, the “people” factor is critically 

important. That includes an airline’s 

employee morale. Air travel is after all a 

service business. 

“It was good luck for General Motors to 

sell off GMAC [its financial services business],” 

Smith continued. GMAC was the 

country’s biggest mortgage lender; it got 

caught in the subprime mortgage mess. So 

far, the bailout 

has been restricted 

to mortgages. 

Expect similar 

troubles in credit 

swaps.” An enabling 

factor in 

those difficulties, 

Smith explained, 

was a rule 

change at the 

SEC that allowed 

investment firms 

to leverage an 

investment up to a 

factor of 33. As a former board member at 

a reinsurance firm, Smith himself had had 

experienced an options-related free-fall: 

“We lost $500 million on one contract 

and couldn’t stop it,” he lamented. 

More on GM: Recollections and Current 

Developments. Later in the morning 

Smith shared insights and stories with 

a gathering of students in the Isenberg 

School’s atrium, including Professor Anna 

Nagurney’s transportation and logistics 

class, and doctoral students in the 

Isenberg School’s Management Science 

program. Nagurney, who is the John F. 

Smith Memorial Professor (which honors 

Jack Smith’s father), uses funds associated 

with her endowed professorship to help 

support the UMass Amherst campus’s 

INFORMS student chapter for Operations 

Management and Management Science 

students. 

GM has demonstrated its commitment 

to a greener culture, Smith emphasized, 

through the Chevy Volt, solar panels 

on its factory roofs, and reduction and 

recycling of waste in its plants. “You’re 

looking at the guy who brought the 

Hummer to GM,” Smith remarked. In the 

mid 1990s Smith’s wife had approvingly 

pointed out one of the supersized vehicles 

to him during a visit to Cape Cod. 

In 1998, GM bought the rights to the 

Hummer brand. “It was a good idea then, 

GM goes electric in 2010 with the Chevy Volt. 

but a bad idea now,” Smith confessed. 

In the early 1980s, as head of a GM 

fact-finding team just back from Toyota 

City in Japan, Smith upset his fellow GM 

executives with 

sobering news: 

Toyota’s lean 

production 

system could 

produce an 

auto with three 

times fewer 

workers than 

GM. “We also 

made our own 

parts, unlike the 

rest of the industry,” 

added 

Smith. Once 

GM embraced its own variation of lean 

production, “it took us ten years to catch 

up,” he admitted. 

“Today, we’re for free trade all the way,” 

emphasized Smith. “Our plants and supply 

chains are everywhere they need to 

be, including China, where we are the 

country’s largest producer of vehicles. 

In 10 years, China will pass the U.S. as 

the world’s biggest auto market. When 

we first partnered there in the 1990s 

with Shanghai Automotive, China was a 

chauffeur-driven market. Back then, our 

partner viewed the Chevy as too blue 

collar and the Cadillac as too ostentatious. 

They decided on the Buick. Today, 

of course, the Chinese drive Chevrolets 

and Cadillacs as well.” 

Jack Smith ’60 with John F. Smith Professor of 

Operations Management Anna Nagurney, former 

dean Thomas O’Brien, and Operations 

Management/Management Science students. 



Virtual Center for 

Supernetworks 

Targets the Big Issues 

It’s been seven years since the Isenberg 

School’s Virtual Center for Supernetworks 

debuted in cyberspace and five years 

since the center opened its own laboratory 

for computation and visualization in 

the Isenberg School. The brainchild 

of John F. Smith Memorial Professor 

of Operations Management Anna 

Nagurney, the center has been the 

logical but exponential extension of her 

problem-solving simulations of complex 

transportation, economic, financial, and 

telecommunications networks. Nagurney, 

who was recently named by The Journal of 

Operations Management as the most cited 

woman researcher in the field of operations 

management, is the author of nine books 

and hundreds of journal articles. More 

recently, she and her students have added 

computer modeling of utility grids, internet 

commerce, homeland security, and supply 

chains—including those for disaster 

relief—to their repertoire. 

Tackling traffic flow. Here’s how Nagurney 

and her students tackle urban traffic flow 

challenges. To determine, for example, 

the least time-consuming traffic route 

from point A to Point B in a transportation 

network, they might devise an algorithm 

based on the following strategy: fan out 

from the starting point and successively 

identify the next point in the network that 

offers the most efficient route from the 

starting point. The researchers feed their 

instructions to computers, which rapidly 

simulate alternative routes for comparison. 

Those comparisons might incorporate 

such variables as the day and time of 

the week, the physical quality of streets 

and roads, and weather conditions. They 

model the interactions among thousands 

of commuters/decision-makers interacting 

on such large-scale networks to determine 

the expected times of travel. Given the 

complexity of large-scale transportation 

networks, they have also been able to 

identify similarities of such systems with 

supply chains in which may decisionmakers 

interact and compete for resources. 

Why supernetworks matter. What makes 

Nagurney’s center special, however, 

is its emphasis on supernetworks—the 

interaction of networks from ostensibly 

different domains. Consider, for example, 

the August 14, 2004 blackout of much of 

Northeast America’s electrical grid. Recalls 

Nagurney: “During the blackout and 

afterwards, the failure of the power grid 

affected telecommunications networks, 

including cell phones and email servers. 

It paralyzed transportation networks, 

shutting down air and rail travel, which 

in turn spawned tremendous road and 

sidewalk congestion. In Cleveland, water 

distribution collapsed; nationally, the 

postal service experienced delays. And the 

blackout froze ATMs, throwing parts of 

financial systems into disarray.” 

A system in which havoc in one domain 

can instantly create cascading dysfunction 

in others, Nagurney adds, is a system that 

is especially vulnerable to natural disasters 

and terrorism. With partial funding 

from the National Science Foundation, 

Nagurney and her former doctoral student 

Patrick Qiang ’08 Ph.D. have addressed 

that timely concern by developing a 

computer-based tool that can identify the 

highest-use, most expensive, and most 

vulnerable nodes and links in complex 

networks. The tool has wide-ranging 

applications both for governments and 

companies. 

Qiang is one of eight doctoral students 

who have worked as Supernetworks 

Center associates. Professor Nagurney’s 

Ph.D. graduates continue collaborative 

research with the center as faculty 

members at SUNY Oswego, the 

Anna Nagurney 

University of Connecticut, Central 

Washington University, the University of 

Memphis, Penn State Hazelton, and other 

universities. Fifteen undergraduates have 

been student associates, three of them 

recipients of 21st Century Leader Awards, 

the UMass Amherst campus’s most 

prestigious campus-wide undergraduate 

distinction. 

The center is the catalyst for the campus’s 

student chapter of INFORMS (the 

Institute of Operations Research and the 

Management Sciences), which coordinates 

an innovative speaker series that brings 

high-profile academics and practitioners 

to campus. The chapter, which was 

honored in 2007 with the international 

organization’s annual Summa Cum Laude 

award, also promotes interdisciplinary 

scholarship and spearheads community 

activities. 

Since it opened its cyber doors, the center 

has attracted close to $1 million in grants 

and awards from the National Science 

Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, the 

Rockefeller Foundation, the Isenberg 

School’s John F. Smith Memorial Fund, and 

other sources. 

“Because research is intellectually 

challenging and socially useful, we’ve 

been able to grow steadily as a center,” 

observes Nagurney. “But we’ve been living 

from grant to grant, from fellowship to 

fellowship. To devote our attentions more 

fully to growing our research, we need 

22 20 UMASS Isenberg school of management

an endowment that will cover our annual 

operating expenses.” 

A wealth of research opportunities. For 

Nagurney and her center, those research 

possibilities are truly astounding. Her 

algorithms and computer models— 

many of them based on variational 

inequalities—are remarkably robust and 

adaptable. At the same time, faster and 

faster computers allow those models to 

incorporate more variables and greater 

detail, yielding increasingly nuanced 

solutions in an increasingly complex 

society. No surprise then that last May, 

Professor Nagurney, with assistance from 

the Rockefeller Foundation, coordinated 

the international conference Humanitarian 

Logistics: Networks for Africa, which 

brought together academics and human 

services practitioners from 12 nations to a 

retreat in Bellagio, Italy. The conference 

examined logistics and supply chain 

research, African field experiences, and 

logistics partnerships among the academic 

community, African nations, and relief 

agencies. 

What’s next on the horizon for Nagurney 

and her center? “The more complex the 

system, the better,” says Nagurney. “Our 

resources are made to order for capturing 

the complexity of international financial 

markets, homeland security issues, not 

to mention the complex socioeconomic 

effects of global warming. We have the 

right tool kit. Why not tackle the truly big 

issues?” 

Visit the center’s web site at http:// 

supernet.som.umass.edu/ 

To learn more about supporting the work 

of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, 

contact the Isenberg School’s Director of 

Development, Ed Brozman at 413-545- 

5607 or at brozman@som.umass.edu 

Dr. Mangaliso meets with prospective Ph.D. students in Johannesburg. 

Isenberg School Professor 

Catalyzes Scientific Research in 

South Africa 

o other country has the equivalent 

“Nof South Africa’s National Research 

Foundation (NRF),” insists Isenberg School 

strategy and policy professor Mzamo 

Mangaliso, who served as the NRF’s 

President and CEO from the summer of 

2006 through the summer of 2008. The 

foundation owes its unique status, he 

emphasizes, to its interdisciplinary breadth, 

which incorporates support for research 

in the natural and physical sciences, 

engineering, the social sciences, and the 

humanities. It’s as if America’s National 

Science Foundation and its National 

Endowment for the Humanities were one 

overarching organization. 

In his role as the NRF’s top administrator, 

Mangaliso, a dual citizen of the U.S. and 

South Africa, managed South Africa’s grantbased 

support for academic research and 

its growth plans for postgraduate research 

training. He also coordinated a portfolio 

of large-scale national research facilities, 

including observatories devoted to optical 

and radio astronomy, another observatory 

dedicated to observing the earth’s magnetic 

field, an institute for aquatic biodiversity, a 

network of environmental observation units, a 

laboratory for accelerator-based sciences, and 

South Africa’s national zoological gardens. 

South Africa’s geography and natural 

resources, Mangaliso emphasizes, offer 

diverse research opportunities. Its 

astronomical observatories—optical, 

radio, and gamma ray (in Namibia)— 

benefit from the country’s absence of 

light and noise pollution and its scant 

atmospheric interference. The country is 

currently involved in beefing up its radio 

astronomy capabilities to prepare itself 

for 2012. That’s when the international 

radio astronomy community will award 

a $1.8 billion contract to a country in the 

southern hemisphere to develop a square 

kilometer array (SKA) of radio astronomy 

observation antennae. South Africa is one 

of two finalists in the contest that began 

with seven bidders. The other is Australia. 

“We’re also closer to Antarctica than most 

nations,” he continues. “As a leading 

researcher there, we and our dedicated 

research ships investigate the continent’s 

changing thickness due to global warming, 

its magnetic influence, biodiversity, and 

other phenomena.” 

The country’s research also targets its 

rich biodiversity on both land and sea. 

“We have, for example, very advanced 

maritime research facilities and extremely 

sophisticated fishing technologies. Beyond 

biodiversity, NRF’s iThemba LABS 

(Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences), 

produces accelerated beams of charged 

particles and neutrons for use in radiation 



therapy and related technologies. 

IThemba LABS, Mangaliso continues, 

unlocks a subnuclear world that allows 

for the production of isotopes, including 

medically useful carbon isotopes for sale 

in international markets. 

A strategy for doctoral education. South 

Africa inherited many of its superior 

research facilities and its university 

system from its apartheid predecessor. 

Many of the country’s researchers, notes 

Mangaliso, are white males. But that will 

shift with the success of Mangaliso’s 

greatest future accomplishment as NRF 

head—the SA Ph.D. Project, a strategy 

to grow and transform the country’s 

Ph.D. population. By 2025, South Africa 

plans to increase its current 1,200 Ph.D.s 

five-fold. “We are starting with some 

distinct disadvantages,” he remarks. 

“Today, every South African doctoral 

supervisor has ten students; the ratio in 

the West is 1:5. We also have only 23 

publically funded universities serving a 

population of some 50 million people. 

By comparison Japan has close to 1,000 

universities serving a population of 125 

million. Clearly, South Africa will need 

to build more. 

“Our Ph.D. growth will be exponential, 

not linear,” Mangaliso emphasizes. 

“The line will remain modest until our 

investment in infrastructure begins to 

pay off in about 2014. Then growth 

will take off.” Mangaliso’s plan calls 

for a tripartite approach. The country 

will beef up its number of Ph.D. 

candidates through sustained investment 

in university education. It will send 

many of the domestic Ph.D. candidates 

to universities overseas for a year of 

research through a sandwich program. 

Finally, it will outsource a full third of 

its Ph.D. candidates overseas for their 

entire doctoral education. (To forge 

the necessary overseas foundation 

for growth, Mangaliso has met with 

education officials in Germany, Norway, 

Japan, the U.S., and other nations.) 

Is Mangaliso concerned that South 

Africa will sacrifice Ph.D. graduates 

to the countries where they earn their 

degrees? Not at all, he responds. 

“I agree with the Minister of Science and 

Technology, Mosibudi Mangena, that we 

no longer have a brain drain but a ‘brain 

circulation,’ thanks to South Africa’s 

exceptional economic resources and the 

growth of the global economy. In recent 

years, great numbers of Chinese and 

Indians educated overseas have returned 

to those countries. Part of our strategy 

is to offer Ph.D. graduates competitive 

incentives to pursue their careers at 

home.” 

Mangaliso’s journey. Mangaliso himself 

is an alumnus of the South African 

Education Program, which from 1979 

through 2000 sent South Africans to 

the United States mostly for graduate 

education. (South Africa relaunched 

the program last July, Mzamo reports.) 

“It was the jewel in the crown of South 

Africa’s opportunities for advanced 

overseas education,” remarks Mangaliso, 

who earned his MBA from Cornell in 

1984. In 1988, he obtained his Ph.D. 

degree from the Isenberg School in 

strategic and organizational management 

and has been a member of the School’s 

faculty ever since. Eleven years later, 

Mangaliso was honored with UMass 

Amherst’s campus-wide Distinguished 

Teacher Award. 

In apartheid South Africa, Mangaliso 

earned his bachelor’s degree in 

chemistry and physics from the 

University of Fort Hare. After graduation, 

he joined the manufacturing/mining firm 

Barlow Rand and then Unilever South 

Africa, where he worked in a laboratory 

before being promoted to management 

as part of a pioneering coterie of fellow 

blacks. “Because I lacked formal 

training in accounting and financial 

management, I soon realized that leaving 

the country for my MBA was a necessary 

ticket to a career in management,” 

recalls Mangaliso. “There were no MBA 

programs in South Africa open to blacks. 

As I look back at my own challenges 

and ahead to our future prospects, I 

am heartened at how very far we have 

come.” 

A Scholarship Can Make a 

World of Difference 

Last spring, marketing major Vanessa Leal 

’09 landed a competitive international 

internship in Kuwait from the international 

marketing firm BBDO. Like many similar 

internships, however, Leal’s came with no 

compensation. How would she cover her 

living expenses without a salary? Fortunately, 

Leal became the first recipient of the new 

Robert Morrisson Atwater Scholarship. 

Created by Robert Morrisson Atwater ’86, 

who lives in London and has extensive global 

business experience, the annual $5,000 

scholarship helps Isenberg School students 

defray the increasing costs of overseas 

study and internships. Last year, more than 

90 undergraduates applied for the Atwater 

scholarship. 

“Mr. Atwater’s scholarship gave me the 

freedom to focus completely on why I 

went to Kuwait—to learn as much as I 

could and immerse myself in the Arabic 

culture of the Gulf, with the hope that I 

would achieve a career foothold in the 

region,” emphasizes Leal. “From the 

moment I walked into Impact BBDO in 

downtown Kuwait City, I was welcomed 

with open arms and given meaningful 

work,” she recalls. Leal’s contributions 

to the firm focused on its account with 

General Motors. In her internship role, 

Leal sat in on weekly meetings with the 

client, briefed the creative team on GM’s 

advertising initiatives, and made sure that 

ads were completed on time for presentation 

to the client. Leal worked on several 

initiatives, including the Kromozone Wheels 

Campaign, Bumper to Bumper 0% Interest, 

and GM 100 Years Commemoration.” She 

also contributed to the GM Certified Pre- 

Owned Vehicles in Kuwait campaign, which 

launched in October after Ramadan and her 

return to the U.S. 

Leal also participated in projects with other 

clients—a scholarship program for employees 

of a telecommunication firm, advertising 

ideas for a bank, and a photo shoot for 

a seafood company. At the end of her 

internship, Impact BBDO invited her to return 

full-time after graduation. Leal notes that she 


New Book Demonstrates How 

Nice Guys Can Finish First 

Robert Morrisson Atwater ’86 

and Vanessa Leal ’09 

is seriously considering that offer 

and researching job opportunities 

with the United Nations, the U.S. 

government, and other BBDO 

offices in the U.S. and across the 

Arabian Gulf. 

“Vanessa’s internship underscores 

the tremendous educational and 

professional value of global 

business experiences for our 

students,” observes Isenberg 

School undergraduate dean 

Carol Barr. “Alumni and friends can 

help our students gain these lifechanging 

experiences by creating 

scholarships and by supporting 

experiential learning initiatives that 

include the School’s two-week class 

trips to Brazil, China, Ireland, and 

six other countries. 

For information about establishing 

a scholarship at the Isenberg School 

of Management, please contact 

the School’s Development Office, 

Bonnie Zima Dowd, Associate 

Director, at 413-577-3206 or at 

bzdowd@som.umass.edu 

“In the workplace, there’s a big 

difference between being effectively 

nice versus overly nice,” observes 

the Isenberg School’s Nirenberg 

Professor of Business Leadership 

Charles Manz. Effectively nice 

leaders and managers, he notes, 

treat their employees with kindness 

and respect while providing them 

with the positive structure and 

motivation to be productive. They 

effectively balance niceness with 

assertiveness. Their overly nice 

counterparts, on the other hand, 

create unproductive settings that 

lack accountability. Nice Guys Can 

Get the Corner Office (Portfolio/ Charles Manz 

Penguin), Manz’s new book 

with coauthors Russ Edelman 

and Timothy Hiltabiddle, explores both the upside and the excesses of the 

“niceness” phenomenon. 

Sixty-one percent of the managers interviewed by the authors viewed 

themselves as “nice guys” (46% were women) who frequently became too 

nice at work. To identify the attributes and antidotes for what the authors 

describe as the Nice Guy Syndrome, they conducted in-depth interviews with 

22 high-profile executives (including the likes of Herb Kelleher of Southwest 

Airlines, John Pepper of Disney, Jon Luther of Dunkin Brands, Daniel La Marre 

of Cirque du Soleil, and John Bogle of The Vanguard Group) and interviewed 

and surveyed another 350 “nice-guy” professionals in different sectors of the 

business world. 

Managers with Nice Guy Syndrome, the authors observe, consistently aim to 

please others and value agreeableness over assertiveness. They give away their 

own personal power by prioritizing and catering to the demands and wants 

of others—often at the expense of truth and authenticity. They consistently 

avoid and minimize disagreement, conflict, and 

discomfort. And because they lack sufficient selfawareness, 

they practice denial toward their own 

shortcomings when making choices distorted by the 

syndrome. 

Fortunately, contend Manz and his coauthors, 

nice guys can overcome the syndrome with proper 

guidance. To that end, the authors devote separate 

chapters to eight strategies (that correspond with 

the content of what they call “The Nice Guy 

Bill of Rights”) to help nice guys overcome the 

syndrome: knowing themselves, speaking up, 

setting boundaries, confronting issues, making 

choices (decisions) without guilt, holding others 

accountable, being bold, and being willing to win. 



School News 

Isenberg MBA Program #1 

in the Nation for Greatest 

Opportunity for Women 

The Isenberg School’s 

Full-Time MBA 

Program offers the 

Greatest Opportunity 

for Women among 

the nation’s MBA 

programs, notes the 

Princeton Review’s 

just-published Best 

296 Business Schools: 

2009 Edition (Random 

House/Princeton 

Review). 

The Isenberg School’s number-one ranking 

was based on the MBA program’s percentages 

of female students and female faculty, and 

students’ own assessment of key program 

attributes. These included resources for female 

students, the availability of coursework for 

women entrepreneurs, and course case study 

materials that proportionately reflected women 

in business. The School also scored high for its 

supportive culture for female students, which 

it accomplishes through various initiatives, 

including its Graduate Women in Business 

Association. The group offers its members 

wide-ranging career, networking, and cultural 

opportunities. 

The Princeton Review avoided a single ranking 

roster for all 296 MBA programs in its survey. 

Instead, it employed top-ten rankings in eleven 

categories, including Greatest Opportunity 

for Women. In its general description of the 

Isenberg School, the Review portrayed the 

MBA program through student comments that 

praised its affordability, small class size, faculty 

accessibility, cooperative culture, and improved 

career services. 

“This ranking reflects Isenberg’s commitment 

to recruiting top female students and creating 

an engaging environment for them,” notes 

the Isenberg School’s Associate Dean of 

Professional Programs Eric Berkowitz. “Our 

dedicated faculty, alumni, and staff ensure 

that we stand out nationally. They support an 

environment with a large percentage of female 

students and a significant number of female 

faculty and alumnae, who serve as role models 

throughout their professional careers.” 

Daniele Mathras, an MBA student and 

president of the UMass chapter of the Graduate 

Women in Business Association, adds, 

“The Isenberg full-time MBA program is a 

phenomenal program for women, with a very 

strong sense of community between female 

students, professors, and alumnae. I hope that 

this ranking will continue to encourage strong 

female candidates to apply to the Isenberg 

MBA Program.” 

The Isenberg School has also received elite 

rankings for its Part-Time MBA program. In 

Business Week’s most recent rankings, the 

School’s Part-Time MBA program ranked 5th 

in the Northeast and 29th in the nation. The 

program serves over 900 students at sites in 

Holyoke, Shrewsbury, and Pittsfield as well 

as online in fifty states and around the globe. 

In a national survey conducted by Modern 

Healthcare magazine, the Online Part-Time 

MBA program ranked 12th in the nation among 

business graduate school programs attended by 

physician-executives. 

Sheila Bair Tops Wall Street 

Journal’s List of 50 Women 

to Watch 

“Getting back 

to basics, saving 

before you buy, 

thinking through 

expenditures, 

and not getting 

too deep into 

debt. We need 

to get back in 

touch with those 

cultural values,” 

FDIC chair Sheila 

Bair told the Wall 

Street Journal 

Sheila Bair 

in an article 

accompanying her ranking by the newspaper 

as #1 among this year’s 50 Women to Watch. 

Bair, who is on leave as the Isenberg School’s 

Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy, began 

her five-year term as FDIC director in June of 

2006. 

“Her outspoken support for efforts to prevent 

foreclosures and her role as protector of the 

nation’s bank accounts have catapulted Ms. 

Bair onto the national stage,” noted the Journal. 

Last July, Bair gained further prominence when 

the FDIC seized the California-based IndyMac 

Bank in one of the largest bank failures in U.S. 

history. And she gained further stature in her 

role in the sale of Washington-Mutual to JP 

Morgan Chase & Co. 

“She very likely will be the only agency head 

to come out of [the current financial] crisis 

with an enhanced reputation,” community 

banking industry leader Camden Fine told the 

newspaper. “She may go down in history as 

one of the top two FDIC chairmen ever.” Bair 

last visited the Isenberg School in February 

2008 as a speaker in the School’s Finance 

Seminar series. 

Professor Bisgaard Honored 

Eugene M. Isenberg Professor in 

Integrative Studies and Technology 

Management 

Soren Bisgaard was 

one of seven nationally 

prominent UMass 

Amherst faculty members 

honored at a campuswide 

convocation 

in September with 

the annual Award 

for Outstanding 

Accomplishments in 

Research and Creative 

Activity. A member of Soren Bisgaard 

the Isenberg School’s 

Finance and Operations 

Management department and the School’s 

former interim dean, Professor Bisgaard is an 

internationally celebrated scholar in statistics 

and quality management. His numerous 

honors include the Cecil C. Craig Award, the 

Shewhart Medal, the Box Medal Award, and 

academician status with the International 

Academy of Quality. The Isenberg School 

professor fosters interdisciplinary collaboration 

on campus between management, science, 

and technology through courses, research, a 

scholarship program (the Isenberg Awards), 

and an annual interdisciplinary business plan 

competition, the Technology Innovation 

Challenge. 


Isenberg School’s Career Center Holds 

Largest Career Fair in School’s History 

“Our annual Career Fair is the largest career event on the UMass 

Amherst campus,” observes Chase Career Center Executive Director 

Nic Wegman. This year’s fair on October 2 attracted 103 companies 

and 1200 students (1000 from the Isenberg School) to the Mullins 

Center, which Wegman notes has reached full capacity as a venue 

for the event. “Recruiters told us that it was a very strong event that 

efficiently leveraged their time and other resources,” adds Wegman. 

“Career Day didn’t happen by accident. It was a year in the making. 

Rich Fein deserves special kudos for growing the event. And Kim 

Figueroa, Amy Apicerna, and Becky Chmura also made invaluable 

contributions. It was truly a team effort.” 

Considering the plummeting economy, holding the event as early 

as possible in the semester was to everyone’s advantage, Wegman 

continues. “Engaging our students 

in career planning early in 

the academic year and for that 

matter early in their college 

careers ultimately improves their 

marketability,” he emphasizes. 

Sophomores and juniors should 

build resumes, relationships, and 

experience through internships. 

Seniors need to establish relationships 

with recruiters early on. They need to 

create contingency plans that include 

prospects with secondary firms and 

secondary job options as well. 

“I tell our students, don’t bail out on what you want to do; just be 

ready with some contingencies aligned with your goals,” he remarks. 

“That even might involve another internship or a temporary job.” 

Seniors who major in finance are facing an especially challenging 

year, notes Wegman. Not only are the number of 

jobs greatly diminished but new graduates must 

compete with newly displaced employees. Many 

seniors in finance are shifting their sites from 

investment banking positions to alternatives in 

corporate finance. Are any job prospects on the 

upswing in the current economy? Positions in 

supply chain management and logistics and those 

calling for actuarial skills are in growing demand, 

Wegman observes. Looking at the bigger picture, 

current graduates will find opportunities down 

the road as the baby boomers exit the work force. 

Some boomers are delaying their retirement, but 

current graduates will eventually be among those 

who replace them. 

“Our approach as a career center has become far more segmented,” 

observes Wegman. “We now hold an annual mini-accounting 

fair early in the fall that attracts 20 regional firms and hundreds of 

students. In February, we’re planning a similar event for marketing 

students and recruiters. Kim and Amy’s exceptional work with 

junior and even sophomore internships has been another successful 

segmentation effort. It’s almost like planning a recruitment season for 

a whole other class. If you’re reading this as an alumnus and you have 

work for interns in your company, please contact us. We need to 

know about those opportunities!” 

Advice to Isenberg School 

Students from the Heart of 

Wall Street 

“Due to the financial crisis, you are about 

to enter one of the most difficult job markets 

imaginable,” remarked Jim Palermo ’77 in 

October to a class of juniors and seniors in 

Finance and Operations Management. The 

Isenberg School accounting graduate is Co-Chief 

Executive Officer of Bank of New York Mellon 

Asset Servicing, the world’s leading securities 

servicing provider, the largest provider of 

performance analytics, the largest lender of U.S. 

Treasury securities and depositary receipts, and 

a leading offshore fund administrator. Palermo is 

also a member of his parent company the Bank 

of New York Mellon’s executive committee, 

the firm’s senior-most management body in 

charge of daily operations. Palermo couldn’t 

be physically closer to the current financial 

crisis: On most days he works at his firm’s 

headquarters at Number One Wall Street, next 

door to the New York Stock Exchange. 

“We have a seat and voice at 

the table during crisis meetings 

with the Fed and the U.S. 

Treasury,” continued Palermo, 

who characterized the $750 

million bailout of financial 

institutions as the “best among 

a set of very bad options.” “In 

the crisis, we’re closer to the 

3 rd inning than the 9 th ,” he 

cautioned. “The credit markets 

have completely seized up. The 

whole market structure is built 

on confidence. This is history 

that you’re living through. 

You’re living through it every minute,” 

he told the students. 

Palermo advised the students to explore the 

upside of the current business climate. “People 

who joined the work force from 2003 until now 

had seen only the positive side of the economy,” 

he observed. “Their risk tolerance grew higher 

and higher until the current crisis. You have a 

different mind set. You are beginning with a 

risk tolerance that is far more level set. Take 

advantage of that.” 

Jim Palermo ’77 

UMass students and graduates, he emphasized, 

have the resilience and work ethic to persist 

during challenging times. “The thing that I like 

most about UMass graduates is that we, like the 

old Avis slogan, try harder. We have to work 

harder than graduates from the private schools. 

My wife, Maureen ’77 and my closest friends are 

all UMass graduates. Wherever I travel around the 

world, I meet and hear impressive things about 

UMass graduates. The stature of the institution 

has greatly improved. Keep that UMass edge and 

mind set!” he urged the students. 



School News 

Students Learn Investment 

Management Skills in New 

Student Managed Fund 

“Managing our own investment fund has been 

a fantastic learning experience,” observes 

Finance major Candice Lo ’08, head of fund 

development for the student-run Minute 

Man Equity Fund. “It’s great to learn firsthand 

critical skills in investment research, 

portfolio management, and teamwork.” Last 

year, members of the Isenberg School’s 

student Investment Club created the fund 

with $25,000 in seed money from the UMass 

Foundation. In consultation with a facultyalumni-foundation 

advisory committee, 

including the Investment Club’s faculty advisor, 

Ben Branch, students have determined asset 

allocation proportions and managed the 

fund for total return. Fifteen students actively 

manage the fund, notes Lo. 

The fund is one of four parallel seed funds 

allocated by the UMass Foundation to four 

UMass campuses. The Foundation has pledged 

an additional $25,000 in matching funds 

to be distributed at a rate of $1 for every $2 

contributed to the fund by alumni and other 

investors. That $25,000 will be divided among 

the four campuses on a first-come-first-served 

basis. 

“Today’s sobering investment climate 

is bringing great value to us as future 

professionals,” remarks the fund’s portfolio 

manager Andrew Dunham ’09, who majors 

in finance and economics. “We’ve moved 

many of our assets into lower-risk vehicles 

and gained a greater appreciation for risk 

management. That includes the importance 

of sticking to set investment rules based on 

objective, nonemotional principles.” 

Alumni should know one additional thing 

about contributing to the fund, adds Lo. When 

it reaches $200,000 in assets, it will begin 

to generate scholarships for undergraduate 

students who focus on investments. 

Isenberg Student Investment Fund Managers 

To learn more about the fund, visit its website: 

http://student.som.umass.edu/investment/ 

studentmanagedfund.htm 

To invest in the fund, contact: 

Ed Brozman 

Isenberg School Director of Development 

413-545-5607 

brozman@som.umass.edu 

Jad Chahine ’09 

The Isenberg School’s annual weeklong celebration in November of 

International Education Week culminated with the award of a $1,000 

scholarship for overseas study to Jad Chahine ’09. A committee of 

judges from the Isenberg School’s Business Communication Program 

chose the senior Finance and Operations Management major’s winning 

essay from a field of 25 entries. Chahine, who will spend the spring 

semester at the American University of Beirut, was born in Lebanon and 

moved with his family to the United States as a five-year-old. “I have 

been given the gift of exposure and insight into both cultures,” he wrote. 

“But I lack submersion in an authentic Middle East culture . . . more 

dialog is paramount to future success and progress in this increasingly 

interconnected world. What we need are more people who are willing 

to speak different languages, more people to focus on similarities not 

differences, and more people to promote understanding, not conflict.” 


Restaurant Owner/Alumnus 

Examines Entrepreneurship and 

Social Responsibility 

On Thursday, October 23, Bob Lowry ’93, an Isenberg 

School graduate in Marketing and the owner of Bueno 

Y Sano, a burrito shop with locations in Amherst, 

Northampton, and Burlington, Vermont, spoke to 70 

Isenberg School students. The event launched the Center 

for Business in Society, a new Isenberg School initiative 

that will focus on business in its 21st century social 

environment. 

Bob’s presentation, Social Responsibility: Balancing Profit- 

Making with Community, explored the role that social 

consciousness has played in his own professional life. Bob 

emphasized that it is most important to find a career path that 

you find exciting. In his case, excitement in opening a burrito 

shop allowed him to learn the basics of running his own 

eating establishment in approximately six weeks. He also 

talked about the most important lessons that he has learned 

in business. First, he learned that it is better not to correct 

workers in the middle of their workday, but rather meet with 

them and allow them to discover their own errors. He added 

that expressing anger in the workplace is unproductive. 

Turning to social responsibility, Bob focused on employee 

treatment and community. Paying workers more than the 

competition and giving them autonomy is the best way 

to retain workers, he emphasized. He also described his 

own extensive community involvements, primarily with 

the North Star School in Hadley and with Big Brothers/ 

Big Sisters. Bob is also co-director of UMass Amherst’s 

Entrepreneurship Initiative, which shows students how to 

start their own businesses. The initiative has 75 participants. 

Hospitality and Tourism Management News 

New Head Appointed for 

Hospitality and Tourism 

Management Program 

In January 2009 Haemoon Oh will join the 

Isenberg School as head of its Department 

of Hospitality and Tourism Management. 

Recruited in a national search, Dr. Oh 

succeeds Rodney Warnick, who has served 

in that position since the spring of 2007. 

Dr. Oh comes 

to the Isenberg 

School from 

Iowa State 

University’s 

Hotel, 

Restaurant, 

and Institution 

Management 

Program, 

where he 

has been an 

associate 

Haemoon Oh 

professor and 

director of graduate education since 2002. 

Dr. Oh teaches hospitality and services 

marketing and hospitality law courses. 

His research focuses on hospitality-related 

customer satisfaction, service quality, 

consumer perceptions of price and value, 

brand perceptions, and utility judgments of 

consumers. 

Dr. Oh’s degrees include a Ph.D. in 

hospitality marketing from Pennsylvania 

State University (1997), an M.S. in Hotel 

Administration from the University of 

Nevada, Las Vegas, and a B.A. from 

Hanyang University in South Korea (1989). 

HTM Senior Receives 

NECMA Scholarship 

Isenberg School HTM major Fred Prescott 

’09 was one of two recipients of the 2008 

NECMA Scholarship awarded by the New 

England Club Managers Association. The 

Isenberg School senior, who recently 

completed an intensive summer internship 

at the Carnegie Abbey Club in Newport, 

Rhode Island, is also an officer in the 

UMass Amherst student chapter of the 

Club Managers Association of America 

(CMAA). He plans to pursue a career in 

club management after graduation. Club 

Management is one of five undergraduate 

tracks offered by the HTM department. 

The program’s large, active student CMAA 

chapter offers its students opportunities to 

network with club managers throughout 

New England. 

Sport Management Students Leverage Social 

Networking Techniques in Course Practicum 

The social networking web site Facebook provides an indispensible 

marketing tool in Sport Management professor Mark McDonald’s 

six-credit practicum course, Sport Event Management. In the 

current course, fourteen students have created their own version of a 

marketing consulting company to draw students to the Winter Dew 

Tour at Mount Snow on January 8 to 11. The national tour, which 

is coordinated by Action Sports Tour and sponsored by Mountain 

Dew and NBC Sports, features varied competitions in freeskiing and 

snowboarding. One of three winter tour venues, Mount Snow is the 

sole competition site in the eastern U.S. 

The DewMass Marketing Team, as the students call themselves, 

includes subteams devoted to promotions, partnerships, and 

internet marketing. Employing a music-blaring vehicle (borrowed 

from Mt. Snow) suggesting a S.W.A.T. truck on steroids, the 

students have created imaginative outdoor campus promotions. 

The team’s promo department has coordinated a tailgate event 

at a football game and partnered with a bar, a local radio station, 

and local skate parks. It’s also paid a visit to a University of 

New Hampshire hockey game. The team’s internet marketing 

group has secured visibility for the January event on the Western 

Massachusetts news and community web site, Masslive.com. 

But DewMass Marketing’s 

initiatives on Facebook 

with timely links to its own 

blog and the Winter Dew 

Tour’s official site suggest a 

deeper, more comprehensive 

penetration into its target 

audience. Launched at 

the end of October, the 

team’s Facebook site (the 

WinterDew Tour) amassed 

430 “fans” within three weeks. 

Once you become a “fan” 

you receive messages in your 

Facebook inbox that pull 

you to the Winter Dew Tour’s site. On the site you can read about the 

coming competition, supporting press articles, and promotional events. 

You can participate in discussions, visit the DewMass blog, and hook 

up with other fans. The site’s growing social marketing buzz, including 

the reinforcement of mutual interests and friendships through its 

growing social network, is similar to the dynamic that helped make the 

Obama campaign’s use of the medium so successful, observes Sport 

Management student Kati Karottki ’09, who is head of the initiative’s 

partnership subteam. 



School News 

Influential Authors Visit 

the Isenberg School 

In September, Pulitzer Prize winning author/ 

journalist David Maraniss lectured and fielded 

questions from 160 sport management and 

journalism students. In his remarks, Maranis 

focused on his current book, Rome 1960: The 

Olympics that Changed the World (Simon 

& Schuster), which brought enduring fame 

to such U.S. athletes as 

Rafer Johnson, Wilma 

Rudolph, and Cassius 

Clay. “Everything was 

contested through the lens 

of the Cold War, in which 

the U.S. positioned itself 

as a beacon of liberty,” 

he observed. But the 

accomplishments of U.S. 

black athletes juxtaposed 

against unequal treatment 

David Maraniss of blacks and whites at 

home presented the U.S. 

with an “unanswerable 

question” that the U.S.S.R. was happy to exploit. 

“The Cold War and the Olympics forced the 

U.S. to confront that hypocrisy,” he emphasized. 

______________ 

Several weeks later, economics columnist and 

scholar David Warsh, in a lecture in the School’s 

Finance Seminar series, explored “mysteries” 

associated with the current financial crisis. The 

author of Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations 

(W.W. Norton 2006) and of the independent web 

weekly, www.economicprincipals.com, Warsh 

covered economics for The Boston Globe for 

20 years. In his remarks, Warsh questioned why 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulsen spent 15 months 

contemplating the investment community’s bad 

investments before buying many of them up. 

He also asked why the fall of 

Lehman Brothers came close to 

capsizing the financial system. “If 

the subprime housing crisis hadn’t 

happened, something else would 

have gone bust,” he insisted. “The 

root of our problem has been a 

lack of transparency, a lack of 

accountability.” 

________________ 

The Finance Seminar Series reconvened on 

28 UMASS Isenberg school of management 

Halloween for a visit by Perry G. Mehrling, an 

economics professor at Barnard College and 

author of the award-winning book, Fischer Black 

and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance (Wiley 

2005). Living up to his self-description as a 

monetary economist, Mehrling displayed and 

dissected the Federal Reserve System’s current 

and recent balance sheets. “We’ve been moving 

the private financial system onto the balance 

sheet of the Fed,” he remarked. “Right now, the 

Fed, which has gradually widened its overall 

criteria for lending, is about $500 billion in the 

hole in borrowing from the U.S. Treasury and 

lending to the private sector. The Fed, in fact, is 

on its way toward becoming the world’s central 

bank.” And what, according to Mehrling, is the 

weak link in the financial system? It’s casting 

AIG and the insurance monolines in the role 

as the bottom-line insurers of credit risk. “That 

should be the government’s job. We need to get 

AIG out of that business,” he told the seminar. 

_______________ 

In November, Tom Vanderbilt, author of the 

best-selling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the 

Way We Do (Knopf 2008), spoke at the Isenberg 

School as a guest of the campus’s student 

chapter of INFORMS (the Institute of Operations 

Research and the Management Sciences). In a 

program illustrated with photos and film clips 

of traffic configurations and driving behavior, 

Vanderbilt explored a variety of issues. 

Passing and merging 

behavior on highways, 

he noted, exemplify 

how individual and 

collective behavior 

can conflict. Traffic 

systems have nonlinear 

aspects. When the 

first and second 

autos in a line of cars 

brake suddenly, an 

increasing shockwave may cause collisions 

down the line. Perceptual distortions can 

also make trouble. When we drive in fog, 

which reduces contrast, we may be driving 

faster than we think. And signage can prove 

counterproductive. Drivers, emphasized 

Vanderbilt, adapt their behavior more to the 

road that they see than to signs. Fewer or no 

signs at all require drivers to be more attentive. 

Professor Wong Advises Knight 

Commission on Intercollegiate 

Athletics 

Sport Management professor Glenn Wong 

made a presentation to the Knight Commission 

on Intercollegiate Athletics on Oct. 28 at 

the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. 

Wong’s remarks to the independent advisory 

panel explored the implications of the commercial 

use of the names or likenesses of 

NCAA and other college athletes in fantasy 

or video games or other forms of new media. 

Wong was one of several panelists who discussed 

related issues 

at the invitation of the 

commission. 

Wong, who is a lawyer, 

former dean and 

arbitrator for professional 

and amateur 

sports, offered four 

alternative business 

models to deal with 

the commercialization 

phenomenon. The first 

and second models Glenn Wong 

proposed extreme 

responses: preserve 

amateurism by rolling back all current vestiges 

of commercialism or adopt a for-profit 

model that would allow collegiate athletes to 

receive salaries, sign endorsement contracts 

and hire agents. 

Wong’s third model would establish trust 

funds for athletes with potential professional 

sports careers. Students would have the option 

of participating in certain marketing and 

sponsorship activities as well as sanctioned 

events. Students would be able to draw on 

the trust after their amateur eligibility expired 

or while still student-athletes to cover training 

expenses, insurance and other activities. 

Wong’s final proposed alternative was to 

channel student-earned revenues into an 

opportunity fund that would supplement a 

student-athlete’s postgraduate expenses, including 

graduate school, professional sports 

preparation courses and internships. 

In his final analysis, Wong explained that 

the current system may be the best option. 

Perhaps “the sky is not falling,” he told the 

commission, but the uneven landscape of 

collegiate sports does little to simplify matters: 

“There isn’t one organization that controls the 

collegiate sports industry, with rule-making 

and decision-making authority. Drawing a 

straight consistent line between amateurism 

and commercialism is very difficult with these 

vast differences in interests,” he said.

Isenberg School Lecturer Stephen Jefferson Named to Rider 

University’s Athletic Hall of Fame 

Stephen Jefferson, a lecturer in the Isenberg School’s Department of Sport 

Management and its former undergraduate director, will be one of five Rider 

University graduates inducted this winter into that institution’s Athletics Hall of Fame. 

A 1972 Rider graduate, Jefferson, who was known as “ Jeff,” set varsity basketball 

records at Rider for rebounds (game, season) that stood for 37 years. He graduated 

third on Rider’s all-time career rebound list and played on teams that were 51-27 

during his three-year career in a league that included Temple, La Salle, St. Joseph’s, 

Bucknell, Lehigh, and Delaware. In 1971 Jefferson was his team’s MVP, and was an 

Honorable Mention All-American. He was an auxiliary draft choice of the Phoenix 

Suns. 

Dr. Jefferson’s research and teaching interests focus on the history and sociology of 

sports. He currently teaches the courses History of Sport, Race and Sport, and Sports 

and Violence. He teaches undergraduates and graduate students. 

Dr. Jefferson earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts 

Amherst in 1987 and a master’s degree from Montclair State College in 1974. 

Stephen Jefferson 

at the board and 

on the boards. 

Ben Branch makes a point. 

The Isenberg School in Korea 

In August, the Isenberg School’s alternative investments center, CISDM, continued its 

role as a key organizer of the annual International Derivatives Securities Conference 

in Seoul, South Korea. Now in its 6th year, the conference, which is sponsored by 

Korea’s top financial newspaper, The Financial News, focused on the theme, Hedge 

Funds after the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis and Emerging Green Finance Markets. 

Isenberg School participants in the conference included finance professors Ben 

Branch, Hosein Kazemi, Nelson Lacey, and the event’s keynote presenter, Tom 

Schneeweis. Sam Chung ’00, an Isenberg School alumnus and professor at Long 

Island University, also presented a paper. 

In his keynote presentation, Professor Schneeweis explored hedge funds and their 

future in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. Professor Branch, depicted at left, 

examined socially responsible investing in mutual funds. 

Make Good Things Happen! 

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ONE STUDENT 

SPONSOR 

ONE INTERN 

HIRE 

ONE GRADUATE 

You can make a difference in the career of one future 

alum, who in turn will make a difference in your firm—bringing fresh 

insights, sharp technology skills, and team problem-solving skills. 

Contact: Nic Wegman | Executive Director, Chase Career Center | 413.577.3156 | npwegman@som.umass.edu

The Isenberg School of Management 

is accredited by AACSB International 

Association for Management Education. 

Support the Isenberg Advantage - It’s a Shared Experience 

Their hard work and your gift will 

help them realize their dream. 

Give back and support the hopes of the 

young women and men who follow you at 

the Isenberg School of Management. 

To make a gift on-line visit: 

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